Thanks for highlighting this, I thought it was interesting. It does seem that, if you thought getting Vox to write about AI was good, it would be good to have an offsetting right-wing spokesman on the issue.
One related point would be that we can try to avoid excessively associating AI risk with left wing causes; discriminationis the obvious one. The alternative would be to try to come up with right-wing causes to associate it with as well; I have one idea, but I think this strategy may be a bad idea so am loath to share it.
Like, “Hey I want you to be able to cover factory farming as a beat,” seems fine, but “Hey I want you to report on how factory farming is evil and bad,” you know, then you’re asking for sponsored content, maybe without clarity to the readers about what is getting paid for. So you’d want it to be something where you want the beat to exist rather than you want a particular angle on coverage.
There is a significant disanalogy between factory farming and AI safety: any journalist hired to cover factory farming is almost certainly going to be against it, whereas there are plenty of people interested in covering AI who are not well aligned on the safety issue.
I have one idea, but I think this strategy may be a bad idea so am loath to share it.
Good news: I have no successfully guarded against this infohazard by forgetting what I was talking about.
1) AI risk is associated with and covered primarily by one side of the political spectrum.
2) AI risk is associated with and covered by both sides more or less evenly.
3) AI risk is associated with and covered in a neutral way.
Intuitively, 3 seems like the best-case scenario, but that horse may already have left the barn (as it seems like it does with most causes).
1 probably seems bad—though I believe Rob did point out that if it becomes a part of one party’s platform, then maybe it’s easier to implement policy when that party is in power. Obviously, that’s a bit of a gamble.
2 seems like the best remaining option then, but obviously with some risks—perhaps along the lines of what you are hinting at. I don’t see why there would need to be a right wing cause to associate it with though. I mean, if both sides are covering it, the coverage could turn into a back and forth, pro/con on the most controversial aspects of it (a less collegial version of the discussion you linked to), which also seems not that great. Perhaps having both sides be philanthropy-funded and not dependent on generating controversy for advertising/clicks could help with that.
Thanks for highlighting this, I thought it was interesting. It does seem that, if you thought getting Vox to write about AI was good, it would be good to have an offsetting right-wing spokesman on the issue.
One related point would be that we can try to avoid excessively associating AI risk with left wing causes; discriminationis the obvious one. The alternative would be to try to come up with right-wing causes to associate it with as well; I have one idea, but I think this strategy may be a bad idea so am loath to share it.
There is a significant disanalogy between factory farming and AI safety: any journalist hired to cover factory farming is almost certainly going to be against it, whereas there are plenty of people interested in covering AI who are not well aligned on the safety issue.
Good news: I have no successfully guarded against this infohazard by forgetting what I was talking about.
It seems like there are 3 possible outcomes.
1) AI risk is associated with and covered primarily by one side of the political spectrum.
2) AI risk is associated with and covered by both sides more or less evenly.
3) AI risk is associated with and covered in a neutral way.
Intuitively, 3 seems like the best-case scenario, but that horse may already have left the barn (as it seems like it does with most causes).
1 probably seems bad—though I believe Rob did point out that if it becomes a part of one party’s platform, then maybe it’s easier to implement policy when that party is in power. Obviously, that’s a bit of a gamble.
2 seems like the best remaining option then, but obviously with some risks—perhaps along the lines of what you are hinting at. I don’t see why there would need to be a right wing cause to associate it with though. I mean, if both sides are covering it, the coverage could turn into a back and forth, pro/con on the most controversial aspects of it (a less collegial version of the discussion you linked to), which also seems not that great. Perhaps having both sides be philanthropy-funded and not dependent on generating controversy for advertising/clicks could help with that.