Thanks Elliot—these are good points. In addition to the popular culture-shaping activities (by media actors and others) that you mention (i), I would add
ii) education activities (forming the future AI developers and other relevant individuals—either through the education system or extra-curricular),
iii) profession-shaping activities (carried out e.g. a professional association of AI developers), and
iv) ideology-shaping activities (e.g. by religious actors).
We decided against including them as I had not witnessed significant influence from these actors on AI governance and therefore didn’t feel confident about explaining this influence (yes, to a certain extent the Cambridge Analytica scandal or France Haugen leaks have been talked about a lot, but they only shifted the mindset of relevant actors on AI because advocates/lobbyists/thinktanks/advisors kept using these scandals as excuse for altering a policy stance. For many policymakers, the scandal was resumed as “facebook = bad company”, not “bad AI”.) One additional source of complexity is that, given their indirect impact, it is difficult to ensure they result in a net-positive impact. For example, Unsafe at Any Speed triggered the American consumer movement but also triggered the Powell Memorandum which arguably resulted in a capture of US policymaking by for-profit interests even to date. However, uncertainty doesn’t mean these activities shouldn’t be considered for impact—especially since they are quite versatile (It’s plausible a skilled journalist could write impactful pieces about AI, pandemics, animal welfare, effective philanthopy and global development throughout her.his career)
Likewise, we faced the question of whether to include EA community-building and grant-making activities as a meta activities influencing AI governance, but that again stretched from “traditional” non-EA definitions of AI governance.
Thanks Elliot—these are good points. In addition to the popular culture-shaping activities (by media actors and others) that you mention (i), I would add
ii) education activities (forming the future AI developers and other relevant individuals—either through the education system or extra-curricular),
iii) profession-shaping activities (carried out e.g. a professional association of AI developers), and
iv) ideology-shaping activities (e.g. by religious actors).
We decided against including them as I had not witnessed significant influence from these actors on AI governance and therefore didn’t feel confident about explaining this influence (yes, to a certain extent the Cambridge Analytica scandal or France Haugen leaks have been talked about a lot, but they only shifted the mindset of relevant actors on AI because advocates/lobbyists/thinktanks/advisors kept using these scandals as excuse for altering a policy stance. For many policymakers, the scandal was resumed as “facebook = bad company”, not “bad AI”.) One additional source of complexity is that, given their indirect impact, it is difficult to ensure they result in a net-positive impact. For example, Unsafe at Any Speed triggered the American consumer movement but also triggered the Powell Memorandum which arguably resulted in a capture of US policymaking by for-profit interests even to date. However, uncertainty doesn’t mean these activities shouldn’t be considered for impact—especially since they are quite versatile (It’s plausible a skilled journalist could write impactful pieces about AI, pandemics, animal welfare, effective philanthopy and global development throughout her.his career)
Likewise, we faced the question of whether to include EA community-building and grant-making activities as a meta activities influencing AI governance, but that again stretched from “traditional” non-EA definitions of AI governance.