They can afford better lawyers than you and absorb a significant amount of losses.
I imagine Bill Gates can afford the best lawyers (and PR experts and whatever) ever, but somehow still, Warren Buffett decided to defund the Gates Foundation in the aftermath of the revelation of Gates’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein (whatever exactly that relationship involved and how adequate the public perception of it is … doesn’t matter here).
Better lawyers and stuff can help you twist the perception of what is true and right in your favor to a point. The relevant sort of “point” here is determined by a combination of common knowledge of the irresponsibility of the companies, their ambitions, their lack of “virtue” (collective and of their leaderships), and a bunch of other stuff.
I don’t expect several lawsuits won against a particular AGI lab to pump enough money out of them to handicap them. But the lawsuits are part of a larger portfolio trying to hit as many points of intervention as possible, and the relevant damage here is reputational, rather than monetary.
The model that doesn’t expect any significant effect from people bringing attention to the issue in various ways is the model that would have anti-predicted Bernie Sanders starting to advocate for banning data centers after talking to Eliezer and the crowd.
Not clear it is worth completing burning the AIS communities relationships with the labs
Counterfactually speaking, I am genuinely uncertain about the aggregate amount of good and bad that has resulted from “AIS communities” trying to have good relationships with the labs. And when I say “genuinely uncertain”, I mean “genuinely uncertain”, and in particular, it seems quite likely that it has been close to a wash.
Also, insofar as suing labs for reasons that are absolutely legit — both legally and ethically — is going to “damage the relationships”, this seems like evidence that the lab doesn’t care that much about the Good, and the additional [levers to influence the company] gained by “having people there” are slim at best, and thus the “relationship” probably isn’t worth saving.
ETA: Alex Turner’s post from yesterday is emblematic of how little influence even “top tier” AI safety people employed at an AI lab can expect to have over the lab’s decisions.
Relevant damage here is reputational, rather than monetary
Okay, that’s interesting, and a good point. That said, given decreasing marginal returns, I expect such reputational interventions to be less effective than you might think (only a proportion of the reputational loss will actually be counterfactual to how things would have played out anyway, maybe it’ll happen slightly faster).
Also, insofar as suing labs for reasons that are absolutely legit — both legally and ethically — is going to “damage the relationships”, this seems like evidence that the lab doesn’t care that much about the Good
Not necessarily. If we’re really doing it to make traction on larger-scale issues distinct from the actual lawsuit, it’s quite understandable why folks at the labs might consider these to be ‘bad faith’. I would even be tempted to make a virtue ethics argument against this.
Alex Turner’s post from yesterday is emblematic of how little influence even “top tier” AI safety people employed at an AI lab can expect to have over the lab’s decisions.
Disagree. It just showed that the US government is even more powerful.
I imagine Bill Gates can afford the best lawyers (and PR experts and whatever) ever, but somehow still, Warren Buffett decided to defund the Gates Foundation in the aftermath of the revelation of Gates’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein (whatever exactly that relationship involved and how adequate the public perception of it is … doesn’t matter here).
Better lawyers and stuff can help you twist the perception of what is true and right in your favor to a point. The relevant sort of “point” here is determined by a combination of common knowledge of the irresponsibility of the companies, their ambitions, their lack of “virtue” (collective and of their leaderships), and a bunch of other stuff.
I don’t expect several lawsuits won against a particular AGI lab to pump enough money out of them to handicap them. But the lawsuits are part of a larger portfolio trying to hit as many points of intervention as possible, and the relevant damage here is reputational, rather than monetary.
The model that doesn’t expect any significant effect from people bringing attention to the issue in various ways is the model that would have anti-predicted Bernie Sanders starting to advocate for banning data centers after talking to Eliezer and the crowd.
Counterfactually speaking, I am genuinely uncertain about the aggregate amount of good and bad that has resulted from “AIS communities” trying to have good relationships with the labs. And when I say “genuinely uncertain”, I mean “genuinely uncertain”, and in particular, it seems quite likely that it has been close to a wash.
Also, insofar as suing labs for reasons that are absolutely legit — both legally and ethically — is going to “damage the relationships”, this seems like evidence that the lab doesn’t care that much about the Good, and the additional [levers to influence the company] gained by “having people there” are slim at best, and thus the “relationship” probably isn’t worth saving.
ETA: Alex Turner’s post from yesterday is emblematic of how little influence even “top tier” AI safety people employed at an AI lab can expect to have over the lab’s decisions.
Okay, that’s interesting, and a good point. That said, given decreasing marginal returns, I expect such reputational interventions to be less effective than you might think (only a proportion of the reputational loss will actually be counterfactual to how things would have played out anyway, maybe it’ll happen slightly faster).
Not necessarily. If we’re really doing it to make traction on larger-scale issues distinct from the actual lawsuit, it’s quite understandable why folks at the labs might consider these to be ‘bad faith’. I would even be tempted to make a virtue ethics argument against this.
Disagree. It just showed that the US government is even more powerful.