The value of having 1 legislator who Gets It is vastly higher than the value of having 0 legislators who Get It, because that legislator can introduce bills. Alex Bores and Scott Wiener are the perfect examples of this; it didn’t take a majority of their state legislatures to Get It in order to get some kind of AI regulation bill passed, but there would not have been a comparably good bill on the table without them.
Yeah it’s possible all you need is a few high powered people who Get It and a good ecosystem for lobbying everyone else, but then you have to evaluate the lobbyists.
Did you have a different vision for how to get really good AI X-risk legislation passed?
I’d interpreted your post has already implicitly sharing something like orthonomal’s view, since I took you to be arguing that we should prioritize getting a small number of legislators who really Get It.
I don’t think we used high-powered lobbyists in NY or CA (someone correct me if I’m wrong); their legislators already wanted to regulate the big AI companies, and they (and their staffers) are smart enough to distinguish it from the sloppy AI bills they usually see.
At the federal level, both Dems and the GOP want to go after the big AI companies, and I believe there’s a bill with teeth that almost all of Congress would privately agree with. The problem is that the anti-regulation lobby already has Trump in their pocket, so they just need to buy one-third of the Senate to stop a veto override. MAGA senators are the most obvious targets, because Republicans don’t remain in office for long if they feud with Trump.
their legislators already wanted to regulate the big AI companies, and they (and their staffers) are smart enough to distinguish it from the sloppy AI bills they usually see
This got me thinking: what’s the marginal return on placing or educating staffers, as opposed to electing a believer?
The value of having 1 legislator who Gets It is vastly higher than the value of having 0 legislators who Get It, because that legislator can introduce bills. Alex Bores and Scott Wiener are the perfect examples of this; it didn’t take a majority of their state legislatures to Get It in order to get some kind of AI regulation bill passed, but there would not have been a comparably good bill on the table without them.
Yeah it’s possible all you need is a few high powered people who Get It and a good ecosystem for lobbying everyone else, but then you have to evaluate the lobbyists.
Did you have a different vision for how to get really good AI X-risk legislation passed?
I’d interpreted your post has already implicitly sharing something like orthonomal’s view, since I took you to be arguing that we should prioritize getting a small number of legislators who really Get It.
I don’t think I understand how legislation is crafted and passed well enough to form a vision, and don’t have anyone to defer to either.
I don’t think we used high-powered lobbyists in NY or CA (someone correct me if I’m wrong); their legislators already wanted to regulate the big AI companies, and they (and their staffers) are smart enough to distinguish it from the sloppy AI bills they usually see.
At the federal level, both Dems and the GOP want to go after the big AI companies, and I believe there’s a bill with teeth that almost all of Congress would privately agree with. The problem is that the anti-regulation lobby already has Trump in their pocket, so they just need to buy one-third of the Senate to stop a veto override. MAGA senators are the most obvious targets, because Republicans don’t remain in office for long if they feud with Trump.
This got me thinking: what’s the marginal return on placing or educating staffers, as opposed to electing a believer?