This response is too angry and generally not a good look. I don’t have a position on the object level at the moment, but reading some of this response makes me think more favorably of Séb; a lot of what you say seems like disingenuous nitpicking and yelling “we didn’t say that!!!” when you said something quite similar and it’s clear Séb simply disagrees.
For example, you say:
Much of this is wrong. Specifically, we believe: (b) not all profits will accrue to labs,[1] (c) that Plan A would significantly decrease lab profits,[2] and (e) ‘de facto’ nationalization is not an optimal response.[3]
This is kind of ridiculous: you believe (b) not all profits accrue to the labs, because some accrue to NVIDIA and a tiny handful of other firms. Séb disagrees, clearly. But instead of addressing your disagreement productively you accuse him of lying. (c) You do believe that Plan A would not significantly decrease the relative profits, i.e. you think that even with the extreme slowdown, the AI labs eat the world. Séb disagrees. (e) I do think Plan A sounds like de facto nationalization, and I think it’s disingenuous to imply that the government can already do more (it costs the government a large amount of political capital to try and they may also lose in court).
I thought both this piece and Séb’s were unreasonable in multiple places. E.g. I thought this was tendentious:
As for our plan baking in too much and not leaving room for trial-and-error/learning by doing, it’s exactly the opposite. Plan A buys us ten more years than we otherwise would’ve had to experiment on our AIs, understand how they work, and try out different regulatory approaches before we proceed to superintelligence.
Plan A does in fact bake in some pretty strong policy commitments. “Preventing progress is the trial-and-error friendly policy regime” would be an absurd position to take about policy stances toward technological progress in general. The point is not entirely without merit—AI development could outrun policy cycles (and arguably already is) - but the framing strikes me as pretending not to appreciate Séb’s position, and that in turn make me less trusting toward the rest of the piece.
Re your specific example, I still think that list is pretty misleading about what I actually think, so I do still want to set the record straight.
It does seem more valuable to litigate the economics disagreements on the object level, but we need clarity on the views themselves to do that productively. I think the econ supplement to ai 2040 is the best place we’ve done this so far: https://ai-2040.com/supplements/economics-of-plan-a
This response is too angry and generally not a good look. I don’t have a position on the object level at the moment, but reading some of this response makes me think more favorably of Séb; a lot of what you say seems like disingenuous nitpicking and yelling “we didn’t say that!!!” when you said something quite similar and it’s clear Séb simply disagrees.
For example, you say:
This is kind of ridiculous: you believe (b) not all profits accrue to the labs, because some accrue to NVIDIA and a tiny handful of other firms. Séb disagrees, clearly. But instead of addressing your disagreement productively you accuse him of lying. (c) You do believe that Plan A would not significantly decrease the relative profits, i.e. you think that even with the extreme slowdown, the AI labs eat the world. Séb disagrees. (e) I do think Plan A sounds like de facto nationalization, and I think it’s disingenuous to imply that the government can already do more (it costs the government a large amount of political capital to try and they may also lose in court).
I’m disappointed by this response.
I thought both this piece and Séb’s were unreasonable in multiple places. E.g. I thought this was tendentious:
Plan A does in fact bake in some pretty strong policy commitments. “Preventing progress is the trial-and-error friendly policy regime” would be an absurd position to take about policy stances toward technological progress in general. The point is not entirely without merit—AI development could outrun policy cycles (and arguably already is) - but the framing strikes me as pretending not to appreciate Séb’s position, and that in turn make me less trusting toward the rest of the piece.
Thanks for this pushback. I think you are right about the top level that generally it was too angry, and decided to edit it to tone it down (but preserved the original and the diff here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i6Y9KTK2cyJ7y3XQtGY6f9F4nloRQr-rep8qSsicYUA/edit?tab=t.0 for transparency). I’m sorry about that.
Re your specific example, I still think that list is pretty misleading about what I actually think, so I do still want to set the record straight.
It does seem more valuable to litigate the economics disagreements on the object level, but we need clarity on the views themselves to do that productively. I think the econ supplement to ai 2040 is the best place we’ve done this so far: https://ai-2040.com/supplements/economics-of-plan-a