It’s not obvious to me that message precision is more important for public activism than in other contexts. I think it might be less important, in fact. Here’s why:
My guess is that the distinction between “X company’s frontier AI models are unsafe” vs. “X company’s policy on frontier models is unsafe” isn’t actually registered by the vast majority of the public (many such cases!). Instead, both messages basically amount to a mental model that is something like “X company’s AI work = bad” And that’s really all the nuance that you need to create public pressure for X company to do something. Then, in more strategic contexts like legislative work and corporate outreach, message precision becomes more important. (When I worked in animal advocacy, we had a lot of success campaigning for nuanced policies with protests that had much vaguer messaging).
Also, I don’t think the news media is “likely” going to twist an activist’s words. It’s always a risk, but in general, the media seems to have a really healthy appetite for criticizing tech companies and isn’t trying to work against activists here. If anything, not mentioning the dangers of the current models (which do exist) might lead to media backlash of the “X-risk is a distraction” sort. So I really don’t think Holly saying “Meta’s frontier AI models are fundamentally unsafe” is evidence of a lack of careful consideration re: messaging here.
I do agree with the Open Source issue though. In that case, it seems like the message isn’t just imprecise, but instead pointing in the wrong direction altogether.
I think the distinctions Richard highlights are essential for us to make in our public advocacy—in particular, polls show that there’s already a significant chunk of voters who seem persuadable by AI notkilleveryoneism, so it’s a good time to argue for that directly. I don’t think there’s anything gained by hiding under the banner of fearing moderate harms from abuse of today’s models, and there’s much to be lost if we get policy responses that protect us from those but not from the actual x-risk.
I’m also heartened by recent polling, and spend a lot of time time these days thinking about how to argue for the importance of existential risks from artificial intelligence.
I’m guessing the main difference in our perspective here is that you see including existing harms in public messaging as “hiding under the banner” of another issue. In my mind, (1) existing harms are closely related to the threat models for existential risks (i.e. how do we get these systems to do the things we want and not do the other things); and (2) I think it’s just really important for advocates to try to build coalitions between different interest groups with shared instrumental goals (e.g. building voter support for AI regulation). I’ve seen a lot of social movements devolve into factionalism, and I see the early stages of that happening in AI safety, which I think is a real shame.
Like, one thing that would really help the safety situation is if frontier models were treated like nuclear power plants and couldn’t just be deployed at a single company’s whim without meeting a laundry list of safety criteria (both because of the direct effects of the safety criteria, and because such criteria literally just buys us some time). If it is the case that X-risk interest groups can build power and increase the chance of passing legislation by allying with others who want to include (totally legitimate) harms like respecting intellectual property in that list of criteria, I don’t see that as hiding under another’s banner. I see it as building strategic partnerships.
Anyway, this all goes a bit further than the point I was making in my initial comment, which is that I think the public isn’t very sensitive to subtle differences in messaging — and that’s okay because those subtle differences are much more important when you are drafting legislation compared to generally building public pressure.
It’s not obvious to me that message precision is more important for public activism than in other contexts. I think it might be less important, in fact. Here’s why:
My guess is that the distinction between “X company’s frontier AI models are unsafe” vs. “X company’s policy on frontier models is unsafe” isn’t actually registered by the vast majority of the public (many such cases!). Instead, both messages basically amount to a mental model that is something like “X company’s AI work = bad” And that’s really all the nuance that you need to create public pressure for X company to do something. Then, in more strategic contexts like legislative work and corporate outreach, message precision becomes more important. (When I worked in animal advocacy, we had a lot of success campaigning for nuanced policies with protests that had much vaguer messaging).
Also, I don’t think the news media is “likely” going to twist an activist’s words. It’s always a risk, but in general, the media seems to have a really healthy appetite for criticizing tech companies and isn’t trying to work against activists here. If anything, not mentioning the dangers of the current models (which do exist) might lead to media backlash of the “X-risk is a distraction” sort. So I really don’t think Holly saying “Meta’s frontier AI models are fundamentally unsafe” is evidence of a lack of careful consideration re: messaging here.
I do agree with the Open Source issue though. In that case, it seems like the message isn’t just imprecise, but instead pointing in the wrong direction altogether.
I think the distinctions Richard highlights are essential for us to make in our public advocacy—in particular, polls show that there’s already a significant chunk of voters who seem persuadable by AI notkilleveryoneism, so it’s a good time to argue for that directly. I don’t think there’s anything gained by hiding under the banner of fearing moderate harms from abuse of today’s models, and there’s much to be lost if we get policy responses that protect us from those but not from the actual x-risk.
I’m also heartened by recent polling, and spend a lot of time time these days thinking about how to argue for the importance of existential risks from artificial intelligence.
I’m guessing the main difference in our perspective here is that you see including existing harms in public messaging as “hiding under the banner” of another issue. In my mind, (1) existing harms are closely related to the threat models for existential risks (i.e. how do we get these systems to do the things we want and not do the other things); and (2) I think it’s just really important for advocates to try to build coalitions between different interest groups with shared instrumental goals (e.g. building voter support for AI regulation). I’ve seen a lot of social movements devolve into factionalism, and I see the early stages of that happening in AI safety, which I think is a real shame.
Like, one thing that would really help the safety situation is if frontier models were treated like nuclear power plants and couldn’t just be deployed at a single company’s whim without meeting a laundry list of safety criteria (both because of the direct effects of the safety criteria, and because such criteria literally just buys us some time). If it is the case that X-risk interest groups can build power and increase the chance of passing legislation by allying with others who want to include (totally legitimate) harms like respecting intellectual property in that list of criteria, I don’t see that as hiding under another’s banner. I see it as building strategic partnerships.
Anyway, this all goes a bit further than the point I was making in my initial comment, which is that I think the public isn’t very sensitive to subtle differences in messaging — and that’s okay because those subtle differences are much more important when you are drafting legislation compared to generally building public pressure.