And not just because some of them are lying- but because useful legislation is such a narrow target, and lots of people mean well without having the skill to actually be helpful
I’m not quite sure which skills you were referring to here, but, some thoughts;
I don’t expect most (good) senators to really be skilled at crafting policy that helps with x-risk, it’s not really their job. What they need to be good at is knowing who to defer to.
One thing I think they need is to know about Legible vs. Illegible AI Safety Problems, and to track that there are going to be illegible problems that are not easy to articulate and they themselves might not understand. (But, somehow also not be vulnerable to any random impressive sounding guy with an illegible problems they assure is important)
Realistically, the way I expect to deal with illegible problems is to convert them into legible problems, so maybe this doesn’t matter that much.
For politicians in particular I mean skills like “knowing who to defer to” and “horse trading to get the bill passed without losing critical parts”.
But thinking about the ecosystem as a whole, writing and nursing good legislation is also a skill I don’t particularly know how to evaluate, which means I couldn’t evaluate PACs or lobbyists even if I had perfect knowledge of their actions and thoughts.
I’m not quite sure which skills you were referring to here, but, some thoughts;
I don’t expect most (good) senators to really be skilled at crafting policy that helps with x-risk, it’s not really their job. What they need to be good at is knowing who to defer to.
One thing I think they need is to know about Legible vs. Illegible AI Safety Problems, and to track that there are going to be illegible problems that are not easy to articulate and they themselves might not understand. (But, somehow also not be vulnerable to any random impressive sounding guy with an illegible problems they assure is important)
Realistically, the way I expect to deal with illegible problems is to convert them into legible problems, so maybe this doesn’t matter that much.
For politicians in particular I mean skills like “knowing who to defer to” and “horse trading to get the bill passed without losing critical parts”.
But thinking about the ecosystem as a whole, writing and nursing good legislation is also a skill I don’t particularly know how to evaluate, which means I couldn’t evaluate PACs or lobbyists even if I had perfect knowledge of their actions and thoughts.