I feel like the implicit model of the world you are using here is going to have effect sizes adding up to much more than the actual variance at stake.
That’s not always the wrong thing to do—the sum of counterfactual impacts of the actions of many actors often sums up to greater than their total combined impact. A simple example would be if two co-founders of an impactful company wouldn’t have been a founder without the other. Then the sum of their counterfactual impacts is equivalent to 2 times the total impact of the company.
While I don’t have an opinion on this particular case, you could imagine that additional AI investment may not have happened if either of the following were true:
1. The original RLHF proof of concept from OpenAI didn’t happen—because Google’s leadership wouldn’t have the incentive for further investment.
2. If Google’s leadership were different—because they may not have thought to invest more money in AI.
That’s not always the wrong thing to do—the sum of counterfactual impacts of the actions of many actors often sums up to greater than their total combined impact. A simple example would be if two co-founders of an impactful company wouldn’t have been a founder without the other. Then the sum of their counterfactual impacts is equivalent to 2 times the total impact of the company.
While I don’t have an opinion on this particular case, you could imagine that additional AI investment may not have happened if either of the following were true:
1. The original RLHF proof of concept from OpenAI didn’t happen—because Google’s leadership wouldn’t have the incentive for further investment.
2. If Google’s leadership were different—because they may not have thought to invest more money in AI.