Setting aside my personal models of Connor/Gabe/etc, the only way this action reads to me as making sense if one feels compelled to go all in on “so-called Responsible Scaling Policies are primarily a fig leaf of responsibility from ML labs, as the only viable responsible option is to regulate them / shut them down”. I assign at least 10% to that perspective being accurate, so I am not personally ruling it out as a fine tactic.
I agree it is otherwise disincentivizing[1] in worlds where open discussion and publication of scaling policies (even I cannot bring myself to calling them ‘responsible’) is quite reasonable.
Probably Evan/others agree with this, but I want to explicitly point out that the CEOs of the labs such as Amodei and Altman and Hassabis should answer the question honestly regardless of how it’s used by those they’re in conflict with, the matter is too important for it to be forgivable that they would otherwise be strategically avoidant in order to prop up their businesses.
There are all kinds of benefits to acting with good faith, and people should not feel licensed to abandon good faith dialogue just because they’re SUPER confident and this issue is REALLY IMPORTANT.
When something is really serious it becomes even more important to do boring +EV things like “remember that you can be wrong sometimes” and “don’t take people’s quotes out of context, misrepresent their position, and run smear campaigns on them; and definitely don’t make that your primary contribution to the conversation”.
Like, for Connor & people who support him (not saying this is you Ben): don’t you think it’s a little bit suspicious that you ended up in a place where you concluded that the very best use of your time in helping with AI risk was tweet-dunking and infighting among the AI safety community?
Setting aside my personal models of Connor/Gabe/etc, the only way this action reads to me as making sense if one feels compelled to go all in on “so-called Responsible Scaling Policies are primarily a fig leaf of responsibility from ML labs, as the only viable responsible option is to regulate them / shut them down”. I assign at least 10% to that perspective being accurate, so I am not personally ruling it out as a fine tactic.
I agree it is otherwise disincentivizing[1] in worlds where open discussion and publication of scaling policies (even I cannot bring myself to calling them ‘responsible’) is quite reasonable.
Probably Evan/others agree with this, but I want to explicitly point out that the CEOs of the labs such as Amodei and Altman and Hassabis should answer the question honestly regardless of how it’s used by those they’re in conflict with, the matter is too important for it to be forgivable that they would otherwise be strategically avoidant in order to prop up their businesses.
There are all kinds of benefits to acting with good faith, and people should not feel licensed to abandon good faith dialogue just because they’re SUPER confident and this issue is REALLY IMPORTANT.
When something is really serious it becomes even more important to do boring +EV things like “remember that you can be wrong sometimes” and “don’t take people’s quotes out of context, misrepresent their position, and run smear campaigns on them; and definitely don’t make that your primary contribution to the conversation”.
Like, for Connor & people who support him (not saying this is you Ben): don’t you think it’s a little bit suspicious that you ended up in a place where you concluded that the very best use of your time in helping with AI risk was tweet-dunking and infighting among the AI safety community?