I wholeheartedly agree that it can be worth allying with groups that you don’t personally like. That said, I think there’s still hope that AI safety can avoid being a strongly partisan-coded issue. Some critical safety issues manage to stay nonpartisan for the long term — eg opposition to the use of chemical weapons and bioweapons is not very partisan-coded in the US (in general, at least; I’m sure certain aspects of it have been partisan-coded at one time or another).
So while I agree that it’s worth allying with partisan groups in some ways (eg when advocating for specific legislation), it seems important to consistently emphasize that this is an issue that transcends partisan politics, and that we’re just as happy to ally with AI-skeptical elements of the left (eg AI ethics folks) as we are with AI-skeptical elements of the right.
Of course, some individual people may be strongly partisan themselves and only care about building allyships with one side or the other. That’s fine! There’s no reason why the AI safety community needs to be monolithic on anything but the single issue we’re pushing for, that humanity needs to steer clear of catastrophic and existential outcomes from AI.
I wholeheartedly agree that it can be worth allying with groups that you don’t personally like. That said, I think there’s still hope that AI safety can avoid being a strongly partisan-coded issue. Some critical safety issues manage to stay nonpartisan for the long term — eg opposition to the use of chemical weapons and bioweapons is not very partisan-coded in the US (in general, at least; I’m sure certain aspects of it have been partisan-coded at one time or another).
So while I agree that it’s worth allying with partisan groups in some ways (eg when advocating for specific legislation), it seems important to consistently emphasize that this is an issue that transcends partisan politics, and that we’re just as happy to ally with AI-skeptical elements of the left (eg AI ethics folks) as we are with AI-skeptical elements of the right.
Of course, some individual people may be strongly partisan themselves and only care about building allyships with one side or the other. That’s fine! There’s no reason why the AI safety community needs to be monolithic on anything but the single issue we’re pushing for, that humanity needs to steer clear of catastrophic and existential outcomes from AI.
Agreed; well said.