Why is there so little Rat brainpower devoted to the pragmatics of how AI safety could be advanced within the global and national political contexts?*
As someone who was there, I think the portrayal of the 2020-2022 era efforts to influence policy is strawmanned, but I agree that it was the first serious attempt to engage politically by the community—and was an effort which preceded SBF in lots of different ways—so it’s tragic (and infuriating) that SBF poisoned the well by backing it and having it collapse. And most of the reason there was relatively little done by the existential risk community on pragmatic political action in 2022-2024 was directly because of that collapse!
As someone who was there, I think the portrayal of the 2020-2022 era efforts to influence policy is strawmanned, but I agree that it was the first serious attempt to engage politically by the community—and was an effort which preceded SBF in lots of different ways—so it’s tragic (and infuriating) that SBF poisoned the well by backing it and having it collapse. And most of the reason there was relatively little done by the existential risk community on pragmatic political action in 2022-2024 was directly because of that collapse!