I didn’t pay all that much attention to the Bores campaign—I am interested in political reforms where being nonpartisan is helpful, and am now working a job with a similar property—but I am sort of confused that I am just now learning that the counterfactual to a Bores win was someone who appears worse for the AI companies. (Lasher apparently also cosponsored the RAISE act, supports a datacenter moratorium, etc.)
Of course, “bad for AI companies” is different from “good for the future”. If Bores is aware of AGI and its consequences and Lasher isn’t, that seems like a good reason to prefer Bores.[1] Bores made a larger bet on AI, which seems worth rewarding if you think AI is important. I also think, more broadly, it’s good for people to try to be represented in politics; the future belongs to those who show up.
But it’s still interesting to ask whether, in retrospect, this investment was a good bet or if we were reasoning correctly about the potential gains. Lasher shows up in @Eric Neyman’s original blog post (mostly as the projected winner), and isn’t mentioned in the spot check. The current narrative is that the Leading the Future money helped Bores relative to Lasher, which I think was not obvious ahead of time.
How much of the LTF backfire was that it raised Bores’s prominence (which we got for free) and how much was that it caused people to rally around Bores and spend in favor of him (which cost us time and money)? I do think it’s very good that we’re in a world where it seems like LTF made a mistake here, and other politicians looking at how this impacts their chances see that standing up to AI companies is a support-increasing move, and this might have been the thing people actually bought with their efforts here.
One might wonder how costly it is to convince Lasher of the consequences of AGI—it might actually not be possible outside of political mobilization for a competitor, which Lasher then feels the need to pay attention to.
There are many people in Congress who favor a data center moratorium. However, none of them have AI as their #1 issue, and this is also true of Lasher. I expect Lasher to be a good member of Congress, but I don’t think Congress will be meaningfully different in its orientation to AI issues because he’s there.
Meanwhile, I think Congress would have been meaningfully different on AI issues if Bores had won. Bores has made AI his #1 issue, and I think he would have done all he could to pursue policies that try to mitigate AI x-risk. He would have staked a lot of political capital on that, as he did with the RAISE Act.
I expect to write a longer reflection, but my position is that this was a really good bet for us to have made, even if it didn’t pan out (and indeed, in my original post, I assigned only a 20% chance to it panning out).
(I also think that the positive effect on the narrative around LTF if Bores had won would have been a very small fraction of the direct positive effect of having Bores in the US government.)
I think “the replacement person is ok on this issue but that is different from championing it, and we really benefit from having a champion” is a sensible take that justifies the effort involved.
Oh man, I didn’t know that Lasher co-sponsored RAISE.
I’d read LTF’s contribution in this campaign as deliberately punishing Bores for being the primary sponsor on the RAISE Act, in a game-theoretic retaliation, rather than specifically preferring Lasher or any other candidate.
With these two pieces together, I’m wondering if AIS advocates unnecessarily burned a bridge here, given that Lasher was sympathetic enough to co-sponsor, thus he might have been pulled away from LTF later if the race hadn’t heated up. But now he knows who had his back when the chips were down, and conversely who was making him work his ass off in a tight race.
I’m not familiar with New York politics in particular, but—at least on the federal level—co-sponsorship doesn’t tell you very much beyond “this person supports the bill”. The RAISE Act had 34 co-sponsors (Lasher among them). Alex, on the other hand, was the driving force behind the bill, helped write the bill, and expended a really large amount of political capital getting it through.
I wouldn’t say that the bridge-burning effect is zero, but I think that raising Alex’s a priori win probability from 5% to 30% was dramatically larger (like, by more than a factor of 100) than the bridge-burning effect, given that Lasher likely won’t be one of the leading representatives on the issue.
I’m wondering if AIS advocates unnecessarily burned a bridge here, given that Lasher was sympathetic enough to co-sponsor, thus he might have been pulled away from LTF later if the race hadn’t heated up.
“I have some news for the two big AI companies who are taking such an unusual interest,” he said. “I won’t be taking my cues from either of you when it comes to protecting our kids, our jobs and our families.”
But now he knows who had his back when the chips were down, and conversely who was making him work his ass off in a tight race.
My understanding is that many races involve the winning candidates making some attempts to incorporate losing candidates or their supporters; it’s not obvious this matters for heavily partisan districts like NY-12 (rather than large, close, ideologically diverse races like for the presidency). It’s not obvious whether it’s worth reaching out to both candidates before a race starts, or after the other guy wins and has a real sense of how much strength you were dealing with.
I didn’t pay all that much attention to the Bores campaign—I am interested in political reforms where being nonpartisan is helpful, and am now working a job with a similar property—but I am sort of confused that I am just now learning that the counterfactual to a Bores win was someone who appears worse for the AI companies. (Lasher apparently also cosponsored the RAISE act, supports a datacenter moratorium, etc.)
Of course, “bad for AI companies” is different from “good for the future”. If Bores is aware of AGI and its consequences and Lasher isn’t, that seems like a good reason to prefer Bores.[1] Bores made a larger bet on AI, which seems worth rewarding if you think AI is important. I also think, more broadly, it’s good for people to try to be represented in politics; the future belongs to those who show up.
But it’s still interesting to ask whether, in retrospect, this investment was a good bet or if we were reasoning correctly about the potential gains. Lasher shows up in @Eric Neyman’s original blog post (mostly as the projected winner), and isn’t mentioned in the spot check. The current narrative is that the Leading the Future money helped Bores relative to Lasher, which I think was not obvious ahead of time.
How much of the LTF backfire was that it raised Bores’s prominence (which we got for free) and how much was that it caused people to rally around Bores and spend in favor of him (which cost us time and money)? I do think it’s very good that we’re in a world where it seems like LTF made a mistake here, and other politicians looking at how this impacts their chances see that standing up to AI companies is a support-increasing move, and this might have been the thing people actually bought with their efforts here.
One might wonder how costly it is to convince Lasher of the consequences of AGI—it might actually not be possible outside of political mobilization for a competitor, which Lasher then feels the need to pay attention to.
There are many people in Congress who favor a data center moratorium. However, none of them have AI as their #1 issue, and this is also true of Lasher. I expect Lasher to be a good member of Congress, but I don’t think Congress will be meaningfully different in its orientation to AI issues because he’s there.
Meanwhile, I think Congress would have been meaningfully different on AI issues if Bores had won. Bores has made AI his #1 issue, and I think he would have done all he could to pursue policies that try to mitigate AI x-risk. He would have staked a lot of political capital on that, as he did with the RAISE Act.
I expect to write a longer reflection, but my position is that this was a really good bet for us to have made, even if it didn’t pan out (and indeed, in my original post, I assigned only a 20% chance to it panning out).
(I also think that the positive effect on the narrative around LTF if Bores had won would have been a very small fraction of the direct positive effect of having Bores in the US government.)
Thanks for replying!
I think “the replacement person is ok on this issue but that is different from championing it, and we really benefit from having a champion” is a sensible take that justifies the effort involved.
Oh man, I didn’t know that Lasher co-sponsored RAISE.
I’d read LTF’s contribution in this campaign as deliberately punishing Bores for being the primary sponsor on the RAISE Act, in a game-theoretic retaliation, rather than specifically preferring Lasher or any other candidate.
With these two pieces together, I’m wondering if AIS advocates unnecessarily burned a bridge here, given that Lasher was sympathetic enough to co-sponsor, thus he might have been pulled away from LTF later if the race hadn’t heated up. But now he knows who had his back when the chips were down, and conversely who was making him work his ass off in a tight race.
I’m not familiar with New York politics in particular, but—at least on the federal level—co-sponsorship doesn’t tell you very much beyond “this person supports the bill”. The RAISE Act had 34 co-sponsors (Lasher among them). Alex, on the other hand, was the driving force behind the bill, helped write the bill, and expended a really large amount of political capital getting it through.
I wouldn’t say that the bridge-burning effect is zero, but I think that raising Alex’s a priori win probability from 5% to 30% was dramatically larger (like, by more than a factor of 100) than the bridge-burning effect, given that Lasher likely won’t be one of the leading representatives on the issue.
From his victory comments, I think he was never close to LTF:
My understanding is that many races involve the winning candidates making some attempts to incorporate losing candidates or their supporters; it’s not obvious this matters for heavily partisan districts like NY-12 (rather than large, close, ideologically diverse races like for the presidency). It’s not obvious whether it’s worth reaching out to both candidates before a race starts, or after the other guy wins and has a real sense of how much strength you were dealing with.