Agree with your background claims. But think we should be pivoting toward advocacy for slowing down / pausing / shutting down AI capabilities in general, in the post GPT-4+AgentGPT era. Short timelines means we should lower the bar for funding, and not worry quite so much about downside risks (especially if we only have months to get a moratorium in place).
I think that one’s level of risk aversion in grantmaking should depend on the upside and the downside risk of grantees’ action space. I see a potentially high upside to AI safety standards or compute governance projects that are specific, achievable, and verifiable and are rigorously determined by AI safety and policy experts. I see a potentially high downside to low-context and high-bandwidth efforts to slow down AI development that are unspecific, unachievable, or unverifiable and generate controversy or opposition that could negatively affect later, better efforts.
One might say, “If the default is pretty bad, surely there are more ways to improve the world than harm it, and we should fund a broad swathe of projects!” I think that the current projects to determine specific, achievable, and verifiable safety standards and compute governance levers are actually on track to be quite good, and we have a lot to lose through high-bandwith, low-context campaigns.
How much later are these efforts happening? I feel like EA leadership is asleep at the wheel here, and the EA community is not cut out for the emergency response we need in terms of how fast it can react (judging by the reaction so far).
Agree with your background claims. But think we should be pivoting toward advocacy for slowing down / pausing / shutting down AI capabilities in general, in the post GPT-4+AgentGPT era. Short timelines means we should lower the bar for funding, and not worry quite so much about downside risks (especially if we only have months to get a moratorium in place).
I think that one’s level of risk aversion in grantmaking should depend on the upside and the downside risk of grantees’ action space. I see a potentially high upside to AI safety standards or compute governance projects that are specific, achievable, and verifiable and are rigorously determined by AI safety and policy experts. I see a potentially high downside to low-context and high-bandwidth efforts to slow down AI development that are unspecific, unachievable, or unverifiable and generate controversy or opposition that could negatively affect later, better efforts.
One might say, “If the default is pretty bad, surely there are more ways to improve the world than harm it, and we should fund a broad swathe of projects!” I think that the current projects to determine specific, achievable, and verifiable safety standards and compute governance levers are actually on track to be quite good, and we have a lot to lose through high-bandwith, low-context campaigns.
How much later are these efforts happening? I feel like EA leadership is asleep at the wheel here, and the EA community is not cut out for the emergency response we need in terms of how fast it can react (judging by the reaction so far).