I think of greenwashing as something that works on people who are either not paying much attention, not very smart, or incentivized to accept the falsehoods, or some combination of these. Similarly, safetywashing looks to me like something that will present an obstacle to any attempts to use politicians or the general public to exert pressure, and that will help some AI capabilities researchers manage their cognitive dissonance. Looking at, eg, the transformers-to-APIs example, I have a hard time imagining a smart person being fooled on the object level.
But it looks different at simulacrum level 3. On that level, safetywashing is “affiliating with AI safety”, and the absurdity of the claim doesn’t matter unless there’s actual backlash, which there aren’t many people who have time to critique the strategies of second- and third-tier AI companies.
I think of greenwashing as something that works on people who are either not paying much attention, not very smart, or incentivized to accept the falsehoods, or some combination of these. Similarly, safetywashing looks to me like something that will present an obstacle to any attempts to use politicians or the general public to exert pressure, and that will help some AI capabilities researchers manage their cognitive dissonance. Looking at, eg, the transformers-to-APIs example, I have a hard time imagining a smart person being fooled on the object level.
But it looks different at simulacrum level 3. On that level, safetywashing is “affiliating with AI safety”, and the absurdity of the claim doesn’t matter unless there’s actual backlash, which there aren’t many people who have time to critique the strategies of second- and third-tier AI companies.