My impression is that immigration policy is unusually difficult to effect given how much of a hot-button issue it is in the US (ironic, given your forum handle). So while the scale may be large, I’m skeptical of the tractability.
On OpenPhil’s behavior, yeah, if they’re making it much easier for AI labs to hire talent abroad, then they’re doing a mistake, but that path from all-cause increases in high skill immigration to AI capabilities increases has enough noise that the effects here may be diffuse enough to ignore. There’s also the case that AI safety benefits a bunch from high skill immigration as well. Indeed, many people I regard as particularly impactful in the field have been kicked out of Berkeley due to visa issues.
Potential area of fruitful cause prioritization research if you have the time and motive to do the math! The particular difficulty I see is there may be no advocacy groups who’d like greater high skill immigration in all areas other than AI research, except safety research. So if the cost of starting such a group or giving extant groups ultimatums is too high, then OpenPhil will be faced with a tricky decision.
My impression is that immigration policy is unusually difficult to effect given how much of a hot-button issue it is in the US (ironic, given your forum handle). So while the scale may be large, I’m skeptical of the tractability.
On OpenPhil’s behavior, yeah, if they’re making it much easier for AI labs to hire talent abroad, then they’re doing a mistake, but that path from all-cause increases in high skill immigration to AI capabilities increases has enough noise that the effects here may be diffuse enough to ignore. There’s also the case that AI safety benefits a bunch from high skill immigration as well. Indeed, many people I regard as particularly impactful in the field have been kicked out of Berkeley due to visa issues.
Potential area of fruitful cause prioritization research if you have the time and motive to do the math! The particular difficulty I see is there may be no advocacy groups who’d like greater high skill immigration in all areas other than AI research, except safety research. So if the cost of starting such a group or giving extant groups ultimatums is too high, then OpenPhil will be faced with a tricky decision.