I agree with others about the fawning. A more “hardball” question I’d ask is: why not the left? It feels at some point a choice was made to build a libertarian-leaning techie community, which backfired: rationalists and adjacent folks ended up playing a big role in building and investing in AI. Maybe a more left-leaning movement focused on protest and the like would make more sense now?
The kind of movement that would be most effective at stopping AI, would be one that is anti-AI with no nuances and certainly no transhumanism. Just emphasize every downside of AI, actual and possible, with human extinction being front and center as the really big reason not to do it.
Yeah. As an example of “no nuances”, maybe an effective anti-AI movement would even have to be anti-AI-alignment. As in, it would tell young people “don’t work on AI alignment”.
One movement is probably the wrong idea, rather we need different movements tailored to working with each relevant social systems and class, and such that they will work well with each other.
Many people dislike AI for mundane reasons, and it seems like thrusts to address the “if anyone builds it, everyone dies (IABIED)” issue are often watered down to focus instead on mundane (but still important) issues in ways that do not address IABIED.
A wedge issue: narrow AI. I think narrow AI is very good and useful and we should redirect investment from AGI/ASI towards interdisciplinary narrow AI. This perspective is much more appealing for many pro-technology people than anti-AI everywhere, and I think that pro-technology people are an important kind of people to convince. But, for example, art generation is (mostly) a form of narrow AI, and it has (much like LLMs) been trained illegally on stolen intellectual property. I think that is a problem, but I do not oppose the kind of machines which would put artists out of work in general. So, an anti AGI, pro narrow AI stance is unlikely to be popular with artists, for example.
Unfortunately, I believe nuance is necessary, but the idea of having multiple movements focused on multiple issues seems worthwhile for negating some of the problems created by having nuance.
As someone who’s more sympathetic to left-wing ideas than perhaps 80-90%+ of the rationalist community, a lot of the reason for avoiding allying with the left is it makes AI safety a partisan cause, and this would really, really nuke their chances of safety policy getting passed, because left-wingers would ask them to take politically controversial stances on a whole host of topics mostly unrelated to AI safety.
Way too many well-meaning people would ask AI safety people to make something like an omni-cause movement, which has been arguably one of the biggest reasons why a lot of movements in the 2010s failed to achieve their goals.
If you think AI safety require safety research, differential acceleration, etc. and trust AI companies to deliver them, your best bet political affiliation will be with tech-industry-friendly bipartisan centrists.
If you think AI safety require safety research, differential acceleration, etc. and don’t trust AI companies to deliver them, your best bet political affiliation will be with tech-friendly progressives.
If you think AI safety require pausing or stopping all AI research as soon as possible through an international agreement, your best bet political affiliation will be with anti-tech progressives, as anti-tech conservatives will recoil on the “international agreement” aspect.
If you think AI safety require pausing or stopping all AI research as soon as possible, and no international agreement is needed because every country should independently realize that AGI will kill them all, your best bet political affiliation will be with anti-tech people in general whether progressives or conservatives, and probably more with anti-tech conservatives if you expect them to have more political power within AGI timelines.
I agree with others about the fawning. A more “hardball” question I’d ask is: why not the left? It feels at some point a choice was made to build a libertarian-leaning techie community, which backfired: rationalists and adjacent folks ended up playing a big role in building and investing in AI. Maybe a more left-leaning movement focused on protest and the like would make more sense now?
The kind of movement that would be most effective at stopping AI, would be one that is anti-AI with no nuances and certainly no transhumanism. Just emphasize every downside of AI, actual and possible, with human extinction being front and center as the really big reason not to do it.
Yeah. As an example of “no nuances”, maybe an effective anti-AI movement would even have to be anti-AI-alignment. As in, it would tell young people “don’t work on AI alignment”.
One movement is probably the wrong idea, rather we need different movements tailored to working with each relevant social systems and class, and such that they will work well with each other.
Many people dislike AI for mundane reasons, and it seems like thrusts to address the “if anyone builds it, everyone dies (IABIED)” issue are often watered down to focus instead on mundane (but still important) issues in ways that do not address IABIED.
A wedge issue: narrow AI. I think narrow AI is very good and useful and we should redirect investment from AGI/ASI towards interdisciplinary narrow AI. This perspective is much more appealing for many pro-technology people than anti-AI everywhere, and I think that pro-technology people are an important kind of people to convince. But, for example, art generation is (mostly) a form of narrow AI, and it has (much like LLMs) been trained illegally on stolen intellectual property. I think that is a problem, but I do not oppose the kind of machines which would put artists out of work in general. So, an anti AGI, pro narrow AI stance is unlikely to be popular with artists, for example.
Unfortunately, I believe nuance is necessary, but the idea of having multiple movements focused on multiple issues seems worthwhile for negating some of the problems created by having nuance.
As someone who’s more sympathetic to left-wing ideas than perhaps 80-90%+ of the rationalist community, a lot of the reason for avoiding allying with the left is it makes AI safety a partisan cause, and this would really, really nuke their chances of safety policy getting passed, because left-wingers would ask them to take politically controversial stances on a whole host of topics mostly unrelated to AI safety.
Way too many well-meaning people would ask AI safety people to make something like an omni-cause movement, which has been arguably one of the biggest reasons why a lot of movements in the 2010s failed to achieve their goals.
Trying to outline the cruxes:
If you think AI safety require safety research, differential acceleration, etc. and trust AI companies to deliver them, your best bet political affiliation will be with tech-industry-friendly bipartisan centrists.
If you think AI safety require safety research, differential acceleration, etc. and don’t trust AI companies to deliver them, your best bet political affiliation will be with tech-friendly progressives.
If you think AI safety require pausing or stopping all AI research as soon as possible through an international agreement, your best bet political affiliation will be with anti-tech progressives, as anti-tech conservatives will recoil on the “international agreement” aspect.
If you think AI safety require pausing or stopping all AI research as soon as possible, and no international agreement is needed because every country should independently realize that AGI will kill them all, your best bet political affiliation will be with anti-tech people in general whether progressives or conservatives, and probably more with anti-tech conservatives if you expect them to have more political power within AGI timelines.