Thanks Ben. A useful outside comparison from climate communications and asking whether the same kind of infrastructure is missing here.
The main thing I’d keep testing with the engagement you get (and can you find 10 people or so to send it through to directly for comment?) is whether public engagement is actually a bottleneck for AI safety right now, and if so, for which audience. It may be that the strongest audience is perhaps supporting policy audiences, professional groups or organisations already doing adjacent work in that order?
I’d also watch whether the Climate Outreach analogy is doing too much work. AI safety may need something similar in function, but quite different in audience, governance, neutrality, legitimacy, and risk management. Interesting to find out!
Either way, I think this is a strong next move. It should give you useful information about the ecosystem, the culture, the gaps, and whether this kind of work gives you energy. It also seems like a good way to test the “translator / operator / bridge-builder” role we discussed, without needing to prematurely commit to founding anything.
Thanks @Martin Underwood. Both of your challenges have been taken on board.
On the bottleneck question, I’m planning to use the next few weeks of ecosystem conversations to test this, starting with whether the audience is policy-adjacent rather than general public. The ordering you suggest (policy audiences, professional groups, adjacent orgs) is probably the right one to work through.
On the analogy doing too much work, agreed. Climate Outreach is useful as a functional model (values segmentation, trusted messengers, long-term framing infrastructure) but the audience, governance, and legitimacy questions are hopefully different enough. Will treat it as a starting point for questions and further research.
Good prompt on finding 10 people to send it to directly. Will do that before making any more concrete plans.
Thanks Ben. A useful outside comparison from climate communications and asking whether the same kind of infrastructure is missing here.
The main thing I’d keep testing with the engagement you get (and can you find 10 people or so to send it through to directly for comment?) is whether public engagement is actually a bottleneck for AI safety right now, and if so, for which audience. It may be that the strongest audience is perhaps supporting policy audiences, professional groups or organisations already doing adjacent work in that order?
I’d also watch whether the Climate Outreach analogy is doing too much work. AI safety may need something similar in function, but quite different in audience, governance, neutrality, legitimacy, and risk management. Interesting to find out!
Either way, I think this is a strong next move. It should give you useful information about the ecosystem, the culture, the gaps, and whether this kind of work gives you energy. It also seems like a good way to test the “translator / operator / bridge-builder” role we discussed, without needing to prematurely commit to founding anything.
Thanks @Martin Underwood. Both of your challenges have been taken on board.
On the bottleneck question, I’m planning to use the next few weeks of ecosystem conversations to test this, starting with whether the audience is policy-adjacent rather than general public. The ordering you suggest (policy audiences, professional groups, adjacent orgs) is probably the right one to work through.
On the analogy doing too much work, agreed. Climate Outreach is useful as a functional model (values segmentation, trusted messengers, long-term framing infrastructure) but the audience, governance, and legitimacy questions are hopefully different enough. Will treat it as a starting point for questions and further research.
Good prompt on finding 10 people to send it to directly. Will do that before making any more concrete plans.