I think the idea of having AI safety conferences makes sense, but I think it would be a pretty bad idea for these conferences to be subsidized by industry. Insofar as we want to work with industry on AI safety related stuff, I think there’s a lot of other stuff ahead of conferences that both: a) industry would be more excited about subsidizing, and b) I’d worry less about the COI leading to bad effects. (For instance, industry subsidies for mechanistic interpretability research.)
I think the idea of having AI safety conferences makes sense, but I think it would be a pretty bad idea for these conferences to be subsidized by industry. Insofar as we want to work with industry on AI safety related stuff, I think there’s a lot of other stuff ahead of conferences that both: a) industry would be more excited about subsidizing, and b) I’d worry less about the COI leading to bad effects. (For instance, industry subsidies for mechanistic interpretability research.)