I think it’s much easier to achieve Plan S than Plan A.
Plan S is simple “Don’t train new AI until there’s very strong consensus it’s a good idea.”
Plan A requires continuously making nuanced judgment calls about what counts as safe, while generally maintaining momentum on training more powerful AIs (and leaving lots of dry tinder around). It’s essentially an unsolved problem to make regulations careful enough to distinguish good vs bad safety cases, and I don’t think the Plan A documents had particularly good ideas for now to do so.
I think Plan A basically only makes sense if we get pleasantly surprisingly good governance (which would be a marked departure from the governance we currently seem on track to have).
We’ve seen examples of Plan S for cloning/eugenics and (sorta) for nuclear power, so it’s not like it’s obviously intractable.
I realize Plan A / Plan S is a spectrum. But one of the main things I’d want to see to feel safer is interrupting the momentum of the AI labs and transitioning the world to “training a new AI is treated as a dangerous, careful endeavor.” I think this requires multiple years (vs the approximately 1 year pause in Plan A).
Some things that’d update me include seeing a) a significant reduction in US gov corruption after the 2028 election, one way or another, b) seeing “AI for epistemics” actually begin to play out.
I don’t think AI for epistemics is actually that bottlenecked on better AIs (community notes didn’t require LLMs at all). I think it’s more just “actually bothering to design social media and other infrastructure for epistemics at all.”)
I think it’s much easier to achieve Plan S than Plan A.
Plan S is simple “Don’t train new AI until there’s very strong consensus it’s a good idea.”
Plan A requires continuously making nuanced judgment calls about what counts as safe, while generally maintaining momentum on training more powerful AIs (and leaving lots of dry tinder around). It’s essentially an unsolved problem to make regulations careful enough to distinguish good vs bad safety cases, and I don’t think the Plan A documents had particularly good ideas for now to do so.
I think Plan A basically only makes sense if we get pleasantly surprisingly good governance (which would be a marked departure from the governance we currently seem on track to have).
We’ve seen examples of Plan S for cloning/eugenics and (sorta) for nuclear power, so it’s not like it’s obviously intractable.
I realize Plan A / Plan S is a spectrum. But one of the main things I’d want to see to feel safer is interrupting the momentum of the AI labs and transitioning the world to “training a new AI is treated as a dangerous, careful endeavor.” I think this requires multiple years (vs the approximately 1 year pause in Plan A).
Some things that’d update me include seeing a) a significant reduction in US gov corruption after the 2028 election, one way or another, b) seeing “AI for epistemics” actually begin to play out.
I don’t think AI for epistemics is actually that bottlenecked on better AIs (community notes didn’t require LLMs at all). I think it’s more just “actually bothering to design social media and other infrastructure for epistemics at all.”)