Suppose that you as a government want to stop a certain type of thing (e.g. drugs) from being in the hands of certain people (e.g. your citizens). Imo there are at least four types of tactics, split down the supply and the demand side.
Hard supply side tactics: raid places where they produce drugs, arrest drug dealers, illegalise dealing drugs.
Soft supply side tactics: fund programs to stop at risk youth from becoming dealers, invest in social services and the economy to reduce the economic upside of dealing drugs
The end goal here is that (ideally) no one wants to sell drugs.
Hard demand side tactics: search people for drugs, criminalise possessing drugs
Soft demand side tactics: education about the harms of drugs, rehab programs to help addicts
The end goal here is that (ideally) no one wants to buy drugs.
Across history different tactics have been dominant for different types of things (e.g. prohibition vs alcoholics anonymous). So far a lot of the ai pause discourse revolves around hard supply side tactics (“bomb the datacentres”, international treaty forcing developers to pause). However, AI development is still a kind of activity pursued because of expected gain by people rather than a kind of world ending plan pursued by incorrigibly evil geniuses. I think there is untapped potential in the other three tactical quadrants. For example, a lot of public awareness work about the risks of AI can be considered quadrant four (soft supply side), in that it reduce’s society’s willingness as a whole to entertain dangerous ai development races.
An AI equivalent might be encouraging the use of self-hosted open-weights AI systems rather than proprietary commercial ones; thus depriving AI labs of revenue that they need to do capabilities research.
Suppose that you as a government want to stop a certain type of thing (e.g. drugs) from being in the hands of certain people (e.g. your citizens). Imo there are at least four types of tactics, split down the supply and the demand side.
Hard supply side tactics: raid places where they produce drugs, arrest drug dealers, illegalise dealing drugs.
Soft supply side tactics: fund programs to stop at risk youth from becoming dealers, invest in social services and the economy to reduce the economic upside of dealing drugs
The end goal here is that (ideally) no one wants to sell drugs.
Hard demand side tactics: search people for drugs, criminalise possessing drugs
Soft demand side tactics: education about the harms of drugs, rehab programs to help addicts
The end goal here is that (ideally) no one wants to buy drugs.
Across history different tactics have been dominant for different types of things (e.g. prohibition vs alcoholics anonymous). So far a lot of the ai pause discourse revolves around hard supply side tactics (“bomb the datacentres”, international treaty forcing developers to pause). However, AI development is still a kind of activity pursued because of expected gain by people rather than a kind of world ending plan pursued by incorrigibly evil geniuses. I think there is untapped potential in the other three tactical quadrants. For example, a lot of public awareness work about the risks of AI can be considered quadrant four (soft supply side), in that it reduce’s society’s willingness as a whole to entertain dangerous ai development races.
Another approach:
Legalize relatively-safer drugs, thus reducing the demand for more-dangerous drugs. (The inverse-gateway-drug effect: legalization of cannabis reduces use of illegal opioids.)
An AI equivalent might be encouraging the use of self-hosted open-weights AI systems rather than proprietary commercial ones; thus depriving AI labs of revenue that they need to do capabilities research.