I think you’re probably correct in general strategy, but what about this:
Since AI safety is currently non-partisan, if one safety professional picks a political team, the audience that turns away from them is still not turned away from AI safety; there are other safety professionals who will pick the other political team. If there are safety professionals on both teams that you see tweets from no matter which sports team bubble you’re in, doesn’t that still bode well for AI safety?
The point is understanding who you are in the equation. 90-99% of the people reading this aren’t Influencers in any meaningful capacity to the general public (maybe within the EA/Rat bubble). You’re likely to be the first informed person a member of the public ever hears talk about the subject, and the public’s views on AI are roughly at the level of “AI good” or “AI bad” right now. A nuanced perspective where people are considering the views of many AI safety people is a bit naive.
What you can do is work to convince pre-existing Influencers to take up the AI safety cause, and we should be working with many Influencers of many political persuasions. It’s much more valuable for you to operate as a non-partisan expert.
We’re should be trying to avoid the failures that other science communicators have failed by seeming like partisan hacks, not experts to be taken seriously. We don’t want the argument to be over the political persuasions of the AI safety experts, rather than the content of the warnings.
I think you’re probably correct in general strategy, but what about this:
Since AI safety is currently non-partisan, if one safety professional picks a political team, the audience that turns away from them is still not turned away from AI safety; there are other safety professionals who will pick the other political team. If there are safety professionals on both teams that you see tweets from no matter which sports team bubble you’re in, doesn’t that still bode well for AI safety?
The point is understanding who you are in the equation. 90-99% of the people reading this aren’t Influencers in any meaningful capacity to the general public (maybe within the EA/Rat bubble). You’re likely to be the first informed person a member of the public ever hears talk about the subject, and the public’s views on AI are roughly at the level of “AI good” or “AI bad” right now. A nuanced perspective where people are considering the views of many AI safety people is a bit naive.
What you can do is work to convince pre-existing Influencers to take up the AI safety cause, and we should be working with many Influencers of many political persuasions. It’s much more valuable for you to operate as a non-partisan expert.
We’re should be trying to avoid the failures that other science communicators have failed by seeming like partisan hacks, not experts to be taken seriously. We don’t want the argument to be over the political persuasions of the AI safety experts, rather than the content of the warnings.