Thanks for a very thorough and interesting report!
It seem plausible that institutional mechanisms that prevent malevolent use of power may work well today in democracies. I think that the comparison is very important for understanding the value of the suggested interventions. You have briefly touched this -
Overall, it seems plausible that many promising political interventions to prevent malevolent humans from rising to power have already been identified and implemented—such as, e.g., checks and balances, the separation of powers, and democracy itself. After all, much of political science and political philosophy is about preventing the concentration of power in the wrong hands.[26] We nevertheless encourage interested readers to further explore these topics.
If these mechanisms are actually working quite well today, this somewhat lowers the importance of the suggested interventions. The analysis given above is mostly for non-modern institutions, but perhaps the court system, democracy and transparency has evolved so that malevolent actors can not really do much harm (or that it will be harder for them to get in power).
Also, the major alternative to reducing the influence of malevolent actors may be in the institutional decision making itself, or some structural interventions. AI Governance as a field seems to mostly go in that route, for example.
That said, I think that efforts going into your suggested interventions are largely orthogonal to these alternatives (and might actually be supportive of one another). Also, I intuitively find your arguments quite compelling.
It seem plausible that institutional mechanisms that prevent malevolent use of power may work well today in democracies.
I agree that they probably work well but there still seems to be room for improvement. For example, Trump doesn’t seem like a beacon of kindness and humility, to put it mildly. Nevertheless, he got elected President. On top of that, he wasn’t even required to release his tax returns—one of the more basic ways to detect malevolence.
Of course, I agree that stable and well-functioning democracies with good cultural norms would benefit substantially less from many of our suggested interventions.
Also, the major alternative to reducing the influence of malevolent actors may be in the institutional decision making itself, or some structural interventions. AI Governance as a field seems to mostly go in that route, for example.
Just to be clear, I’m very much in favor of such “structural interventions”. In fact, they overall seem more promising to me. However, it might not be everyone’s comparative advantage to contribute to them which is why I thought it valuable to explore potentially more neglected alternatives where lower-hanging fruits are still to be picked.
That said, I think that efforts going into your suggested interventions are largely orthogonal to these alternatives (and might actually be supportive of one another).
Yes, my sense is that they should be mutually supportive—I don’t see why they shouldn’t. I’m glad you share this impression (at least to some extent)!
Thanks for a very thorough and interesting report!
It seem plausible that institutional mechanisms that prevent malevolent use of power may work well today in democracies. I think that the comparison is very important for understanding the value of the suggested interventions. You have briefly touched this -
If these mechanisms are actually working quite well today, this somewhat lowers the importance of the suggested interventions. The analysis given above is mostly for non-modern institutions, but perhaps the court system, democracy and transparency has evolved so that malevolent actors can not really do much harm (or that it will be harder for them to get in power).
Also, the major alternative to reducing the influence of malevolent actors may be in the institutional decision making itself, or some structural interventions. AI Governance as a field seems to mostly go in that route, for example.
That said, I think that efforts going into your suggested interventions are largely orthogonal to these alternatives (and might actually be supportive of one another). Also, I intuitively find your arguments quite compelling.
I agree that they probably work well but there still seems to be room for improvement. For example, Trump doesn’t seem like a beacon of kindness and humility, to put it mildly. Nevertheless, he got elected President. On top of that, he wasn’t even required to release his tax returns—one of the more basic ways to detect malevolence.
Of course, I agree that stable and well-functioning democracies with good cultural norms would benefit substantially less from many of our suggested interventions.
Just to be clear, I’m very much in favor of such “structural interventions”. In fact, they overall seem more promising to me. However, it might not be everyone’s comparative advantage to contribute to them which is why I thought it valuable to explore potentially more neglected alternatives where lower-hanging fruits are still to be picked.
Yes, my sense is that they should be mutually supportive—I don’t see why they shouldn’t. I’m glad you share this impression (at least to some extent)!