I read and responded to some pieces of that post when it came out; I don’t know whether Eliezer, Nate, etc. read it, and I’m guessing it didn’t shift MIRI, except as one of many data points “person X is now loudly in favor of a pause (and other people seem receptive), so maybe this is more politically tractable than we thought”.
I’d say that Kerry Vaughan was the main person who started smashing this Overton window, and this started in April/May/June of 2022. By late December my recollection is that this public conversation was already fully in swing and MIRI had already added our voices to the “stop building toward AGI” chorus. (Though at that stage I think we were mostly doing this on general principle, for lack of any better ideas than “share our actual long-standing views and hope that helps somehow”. Our increased optimism about policy solutions mostly came later, in 2023.)
That said, I bet Katja’s post had tons of relevant positive effects even if it didn’t directly shift MIRI’s views.
I read and responded to some pieces of that post when it came out; I don’t know whether Eliezer, Nate, etc. read it, and I’m guessing it didn’t shift MIRI, except as one of many data points “person X is now loudly in favor of a pause (and other people seem receptive), so maybe this is more politically tractable than we thought”.
I’d say that Kerry Vaughan was the main person who started smashing this Overton window, and this started in April/May/June of 2022. By late December my recollection is that this public conversation was already fully in swing and MIRI had already added our voices to the “stop building toward AGI” chorus. (Though at that stage I think we were mostly doing this on general principle, for lack of any better ideas than “share our actual long-standing views and hope that helps somehow”. Our increased optimism about policy solutions mostly came later, in 2023.)
That said, I bet Katja’s post had tons of relevant positive effects even if it didn’t directly shift MIRI’s views.
Don’t forget lc had a 624 karma post on it on April 4th 2022.