To your first para—yes I wonder how unionised countries and relevant sectors are in bottlenecks in the compute supply chain—Netherlands, Japan and Taiwan. I don’t know enough about the efficacy of boycotts to comment on the union led boycotts idea.
I’ve raised this in response to another comment but I want to also address here the concern that workers who join a union would organise to accelerate the development of AI. I think that is very unlikely—the history of unions is a strong tradition of safety, slowing down or stopping work. I do not know an example of a union that has instead prioritised acceleration but there’s probably some and it would get grey as you move into the workers self-management space.
Yeah I don’t have a strong opinion about whether they would accelerate it—I was just saying, even if some workers would support acceleration, other workers could work to slow it down.
One reason that developers might oppose slowing down AI is that it would put them out of work, wouldn’t it? (Or threaten to). So if someone is not convinced that AI poses a big risk, or thinks that pausing isn’t the best way to address the risk, then lobbying to slow down AI development would be a big cost for no obvious benefit.
To your first para—yes I wonder how unionised countries and relevant sectors are in bottlenecks in the compute supply chain—Netherlands, Japan and Taiwan. I don’t know enough about the efficacy of boycotts to comment on the union led boycotts idea.
I’ve raised this in response to another comment but I want to also address here the concern that workers who join a union would organise to accelerate the development of AI. I think that is very unlikely—the history of unions is a strong tradition of safety, slowing down or stopping work. I do not know an example of a union that has instead prioritised acceleration but there’s probably some and it would get grey as you move into the workers self-management space.
Yeah I don’t have a strong opinion about whether they would accelerate it—I was just saying, even if some workers would support acceleration, other workers could work to slow it down.
One reason that developers might oppose slowing down AI is that it would put them out of work, wouldn’t it? (Or threaten to). So if someone is not convinced that AI poses a big risk, or thinks that pausing isn’t the best way to address the risk, then lobbying to slow down AI development would be a big cost for no obvious benefit.