Do people at Gov AI generally agree with the message/messaging of the talk 2–3 years later?
The answer would be a nice data point for “are we clueless to give advice on AI policy” debate/sentiments. And I am curious about how beneficial corporations/financiers can be for ~selfish reasons (cf. BlackRock on environmental sustainability and coronavirus cure/vaccine).
Happy to give my view. Could you say something about what particular views or messages you’re curious about? (I don’t have time to reread the script atm)
Thank you for a speedy reply, Markus! Jade makes three major points (see the attached slide). I would appreciate your high-level impressions on these (if you lack time reporting oneliners like “mostly agree” or “too much nuance to settle on oneliner” still would be valuable).
If you’d take time to elaborate on any of these, I would prefer the last one. Specifically on:
What are the reasons why them preemptively engaging is likely to lead to prosocial regulation? [emphasis mine] Two reasons why. One: the rationale for a firm would be something like, “We should be doing the thing that governance will want us to do, so that they don’t then go in and put in regulation that is not good for us.” And if you assume that governance has that incentive structure to deliver on public goods, then firms, at the very least, will converge on the idea that they should be mitigating their externalities and delivering on prosocial outcomes in the same way that the state regulation probably would.
The more salient one in the case of AI is that public opinion actually plays a fairly large role in dictating what firms think are prosocial. [...]
Some brief thoughts (just my quick takes. My guess is that others might disagree, including at GovAI):
Overall, I think the situation is quite different compared to 2018, when I think the talk was recorded. AI governance / policy issues are much more prominent in the media, in politics, etc. The EU Commission has proposed some pretty comprehensive AI legislation. As such, there’s more pressure on companies as well as governments to take action. I think there’s also better understanding of what AI policy is sensible. All these things update me against 1 (insofar as we are still in the formative stages) and 2. They also update me in favour of thinking something like: governments will want to take a bunch of actions related to AI and so we should try to steer those actions in positive directions.
I think the AI policy / governance field is mature enough at this point that it’s not that helpful to think of an AI governance regime as one unitary thing. I much prefer thinking about specific areas of AI governance. Depending on the area, I’d likely have different views on 1-3. For example, it seems likely that companies are best placed to help develop standards that may be used to inform legislation further down the line. I wouldn’t expect companies to be best placed to figure out what the US should do wrt updates to antitrust regulation.
On 3, I think it’s true that companies have incentives in favour of acting prosocially and that we can boost these incentives. I’m not sure those incentives outweigh their other incentives, though. The view is not that e.g. Facebook, Amazon, Google, are all-things-considered going to act in the public interest. I also don’t think Jade-2018 held that view.
Do people at Gov AI generally agree with the message/messaging of the talk 2–3 years later?
The answer would be a nice data point for “are we clueless to give advice on AI policy” debate/sentiments. And I am curious about how beneficial corporations/financiers can be for ~selfish reasons (cf. BlackRock on environmental sustainability and coronavirus cure/vaccine).
Happy to give my view. Could you say something about what particular views or messages you’re curious about? (I don’t have time to reread the script atm)
Thank you for a speedy reply, Markus! Jade makes three major points (see the attached slide). I would appreciate your high-level impressions on these (if you lack time reporting oneliners like “mostly agree” or “too much nuance to settle on oneliner” still would be valuable).
If you’d take time to elaborate on any of these, I would prefer the last one. Specifically on:
Some brief thoughts (just my quick takes. My guess is that others might disagree, including at GovAI):
Overall, I think the situation is quite different compared to 2018, when I think the talk was recorded. AI governance / policy issues are much more prominent in the media, in politics, etc. The EU Commission has proposed some pretty comprehensive AI legislation. As such, there’s more pressure on companies as well as governments to take action. I think there’s also better understanding of what AI policy is sensible. All these things update me against 1 (insofar as we are still in the formative stages) and 2. They also update me in favour of thinking something like: governments will want to take a bunch of actions related to AI and so we should try to steer those actions in positive directions.
I think the AI policy / governance field is mature enough at this point that it’s not that helpful to think of an AI governance regime as one unitary thing. I much prefer thinking about specific areas of AI governance. Depending on the area, I’d likely have different views on 1-3. For example, it seems likely that companies are best placed to help develop standards that may be used to inform legislation further down the line. I wouldn’t expect companies to be best placed to figure out what the US should do wrt updates to antitrust regulation.
On 3, I think it’s true that companies have incentives in favour of acting prosocially and that we can boost these incentives. I’m not sure those incentives outweigh their other incentives, though. The view is not that e.g. Facebook, Amazon, Google, are all-things-considered going to act in the public interest. I also don’t think Jade-2018 held that view.