Heads up—if you’re 1. on a H1-B visa AND 2. currently outside the US, there is VERY IMPORTANT, EXTREMELY TIME SENSITIVE stuff going on that might prevent you from getting back into the US after 21 September.
If this applies to you, immediately stop looking at LessWrong and look at the latest news. (I’m not providing a summary of it here because there are conflicting stories about who it will apply to and it’s evolving hour by hour and I don’t want this post to be out of date)
So what does it mean about the AI race and the harm to the AI companies caused by Trump’s decisions? My quick take about the AI-2027 scenario shows that the modifiers will need to reconsider the forecasts related to compute available, timelines when the superhuman coder will be invented and the security forecast. Unfortunately, I lack the data necessary to understand how the timelines of creating superhuman coders will be affected and the understanding of American politics. I would guess that even the wargame is to be reconsidered in order to account for changes related to compute, to human geniuses and to the difficulty of creating factories at home...
Arguably the worst-case scenarios would be the USA having dumb researchers, but more compute than China, rushing into the intelligence explosion, forcing China to race and misaligning both the American AI (stolen from China or invented later and doing automated research faster) and the Chinese AI as a result of the race. Or China being far closer to the USA in terms of compute and stealing the American supercoder.
So, if there was no crisis in the USA or if China was the monopolist in the AI race, then mankind’s chances of survival would be far from zero, but a special set of circumstances could arguably nullify them.
For some H-1B folks with strong evidence (publications, awards, press, critical roles), O-1 may be an option—talk to your employer/immigration counsel. Not legal advice.
(Previous version of this comment which got downvoted) I think that most people reading this would be eligible for an O1 visa. Please feel free to send me a lesswrong DM if you need help finding a lawyer or a connection to someone that can write a support letter for you.
a lot of h1b folks are engineers, not researchers. and a lot of the O-1 requirements are academic/research-oriented, or at least it’s marginally easier if you’re a researcher
Heads up—if you’re 1. on a H1-B visa AND 2. currently outside the US, there is VERY IMPORTANT, EXTREMELY TIME SENSITIVE stuff going on that might prevent you from getting back into the US after 21 September.
If this applies to you, immediately stop looking at LessWrong and look at the latest news. (I’m not providing a summary of it here because there are conflicting stories about who it will apply to and it’s evolving hour by hour and I don’t want this post to be out of date)
USCIS says this does not apply to existing H1-B visas, only to new applications: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/memos/H1B_Proc_Memo_FINAL.pdf
(I am not a lawyer nor a spokesperson for the US government and cannot advise on how likely it is that they will somehow backtrack on this.)
So what does it mean about the AI race and the harm to the AI companies caused by Trump’s decisions? My quick take about the AI-2027 scenario shows that the modifiers will need to reconsider the forecasts related to compute available, timelines when the superhuman coder will be invented and the security forecast. Unfortunately, I lack the data necessary to understand how the timelines of creating superhuman coders will be affected and the understanding of American politics. I would guess that even the wargame is to be reconsidered in order to account for changes related to compute, to human geniuses and to the difficulty of creating factories at home...
Arguably the worst-case scenarios would be the USA having dumb researchers, but more compute than China, rushing into the intelligence explosion, forcing China to race and misaligning both the American AI (stolen from China or invented later and doing automated research faster) and the Chinese AI as a result of the race. Or China being far closer to the USA in terms of compute and stealing the American supercoder.
So, if there was no crisis in the USA or if China was the monopolist in the AI race, then mankind’s chances of survival would be far from zero, but a special set of circumstances could arguably nullify them.
For some H-1B folks with strong evidence (publications, awards, press, critical roles), O-1 may be an option—talk to your employer/immigration counsel. Not legal advice.
(Previous version of this comment which got downvoted)
I think that most people reading this would be eligible for an O1 visa. Please feel free to send me a lesswrong DM if you need help finding a lawyer or a connection to someone that can write a support letter for you.a lot of h1b folks are engineers, not researchers. and a lot of the O-1 requirements are academic/research-oriented, or at least it’s marginally easier if you’re a researcher