It is interesting how the US Constitution has contingencies for “things can be weird, so the US president can do weird things in response”. For example the history of US pardons (including the pardon of Nixon) was surprising to me. I wonder how much AI specs and RSPs should include this kind of targeted exception to regular process.
This seems like exactly the wrong lesson to take? If you’re the president, you want the ability to do weird things when things get weird, but if you’re creating a system to contain the president, you really don’t want to give them the ability to do weird things when things get weird, indeed it is a standard play when turning a democracy into a dictatorship to suspend laws due to emergencies and other exceptions.
Given our RSPs and RLHF constitutions are meant to be systems to contain AI labs and models, it does not seem good to have “if things are going weird, do tf you want” clauses. If nothing else, things will get weird, that is all but guaranteed so if you have such a clause, the whole framework becomes just “do tf you want”.
I also just really don’t know how you can look at Trump and say “wow, people sure were real smart when they gave the president all those emergency powers and stuff, weren’t they?”
What I find interesting with the pardon example is that is it a weird but very targeted exception to the regular process.
This is quite different from broader exceptions like how many countries give more power to the executive branch in states of emergency, or things like footnote 17 of RSPv2.2.
The pardon example does not at all seem very targeted, the constitution doesn’t even say that weird shit needs to happen before it can be used, and my impression is (though I haven’t done a review of the literature) that much of the time it’s used for nepotism and cronyism, so that one’s friends, families, and political allies don’t have to obey the laws. Recently its been used as a defense for the president himself to avoid laws and justice.
Yes, comparatively its less dumb than things of the form “the president can decide whether there’s an emergency x and then under those circumstances they get a whole bunch more power”, but its still a great tax on the principle of equality under and rule of law.
That this power was used against Nixon is special because it was the president helping their political enemies, it is clearly, on its face, a bad thing to set such a precedent that once president one is not subject to laws anymore because other presidents will bail you out.
This seems like exactly the wrong lesson to take? If you’re the president, you want the ability to do weird things when things get weird, but if you’re creating a system to contain the president, you really don’t want to give them the ability to do weird things when things get weird, indeed it is a standard play when turning a democracy into a dictatorship to suspend laws due to emergencies and other exceptions.
Given our RSPs and RLHF constitutions are meant to be systems to contain AI labs and models, it does not seem good to have “if things are going weird, do tf you want” clauses. If nothing else, things will get weird, that is all but guaranteed so if you have such a clause, the whole framework becomes just “do tf you want”.
I also just really don’t know how you can look at Trump and say “wow, people sure were real smart when they gave the president all those emergency powers and stuff, weren’t they?”
What I find interesting with the pardon example is that is it a weird but very targeted exception to the regular process.
This is quite different from broader exceptions like how many countries give more power to the executive branch in states of emergency, or things like footnote 17 of RSPv2.2.
The pardon example does not at all seem very targeted, the constitution doesn’t even say that weird shit needs to happen before it can be used, and my impression is (though I haven’t done a review of the literature) that much of the time it’s used for nepotism and cronyism, so that one’s friends, families, and political allies don’t have to obey the laws. Recently its been used as a defense for the president himself to avoid laws and justice.
Yes, comparatively its less dumb than things of the form “the president can decide whether there’s an emergency x and then under those circumstances they get a whole bunch more power”, but its still a great tax on the principle of equality under and rule of law.
That this power was used against Nixon is special because it was the president helping their political enemies, it is clearly, on its face, a bad thing to set such a precedent that once president one is not subject to laws anymore because other presidents will bail you out.