It’s a foregone conclusion for EAs that “AI Safety” involves being on the good side of the AI labs. Most of the reasons they dismiss Pause come down to how they think it would compromise their reputation with and access to industry. It’s hard to get them to even consider not cozying up to the labs because technical safety is what they trained to do and is the highest status.
A nested assumption from there is that partial, marginal improvements in technical safety work but anything less than achieving a full international Pause would mean the PauseAI strategy failed. I anticipate having to explain to you how sentiment rallying works and how moving the Overton window is helpful to many safety measure short of Pause— most EAs have very all or nothing thinking about this, such that they think PauseAI is a Hail Mary instead of a strategy that works at all doses. This is usually bc they know very little about social movements.
EAs tend to be very allergic to speaking effectively for advocacy, and they believe that using simpler statements that they consider to be unnuanced is going to reflect negatively on the cause because they are trying to impress industry insiders.
EAs have ~zero appreciation for the psychological difficulty of “changing the AI industry from within”. They are quickly captured and then rationalize together, their tools of discourse too nuanced and flexible to give them any clear conclusions when they can make themselves outs instead. When I say this difficulty makes it a very unrealistic intervention with high backfire potential, EAs think they are proving me wrong by saying that the greatest outcome of all would be to influence to from within and get AI benefits, so that’s what they have to pursue.
I think I disagree with a bunch of what you said there: I don’t think good AIS involves being on good side of AI labs necessarily (tho I think there are good arguments for this), I think large movement building without getting a full pause would be a big win for PauseAI and that many EAs would agree with this (despite the fact that I and maybe them know little about social movements), and I do think making simple statements reflects negatively from a whole host of perspectives and should be taken pretty seriously.
I’d be interested in hearing how you/others at pause AI have tracked how much of this marginal improvements to advocacy you have been doing so far is. What are the wins? What were the costs? Happy to also get on a call with someone about this.
If there are real numbers on this (I know it’s hard in spaces like yours), I’d be curious about hearing why they aren’t often posted on the forum/LW, as that, I think, would be more helpful to people (and tracking the cost-effectiveness of AIS in general is super underrated, so this would be good).
If you don’t have the numbers, I would ask why you are so confident that this is actually the right approach.
Oh, sorry. I asked my friend, and they said it was Stop AI—not Pause AI. They basically protested in the middle of a talk with the CEA CEO saying things like he is a murderer, which I just think is pretty nuts. That is my bad, though. I have edited that part out of my initial comment.
Yeah they really did us dirty by basically stealing our name when I kicked the founders out of PauseAI because they want to do illegal things and disruptive stunts like that.
It’s a foregone conclusion for EAs that “AI Safety” involves being on the good side of the AI labs. Most of the reasons they dismiss Pause come down to how they think it would compromise their reputation with and access to industry. It’s hard to get them to even consider not cozying up to the labs because technical safety is what they trained to do and is the highest status.
A nested assumption from there is that partial, marginal improvements in technical safety work but anything less than achieving a full international Pause would mean the PauseAI strategy failed. I anticipate having to explain to you how sentiment rallying works and how moving the Overton window is helpful to many safety measure short of Pause— most EAs have very all or nothing thinking about this, such that they think PauseAI is a Hail Mary instead of a strategy that works at all doses. This is usually bc they know very little about social movements.
EAs tend to be very allergic to speaking effectively for advocacy, and they believe that using simpler statements that they consider to be unnuanced is going to reflect negatively on the cause because they are trying to impress industry insiders.
EAs have ~zero appreciation for the psychological difficulty of “changing the AI industry from within”. They are quickly captured and then rationalize together, their tools of discourse too nuanced and flexible to give them any clear conclusions when they can make themselves outs instead. When I say this difficulty makes it a very unrealistic intervention with high backfire potential, EAs think they are proving me wrong by saying that the greatest outcome of all would be to influence to from within and get AI benefits, so that’s what they have to pursue.
I think I disagree with a bunch of what you said there: I don’t think good AIS involves being on good side of AI labs necessarily (tho I think there are good arguments for this), I think large movement building without getting a full pause would be a big win for PauseAI and that many EAs would agree with this (despite the fact that I and maybe them know little about social movements), and I do think making simple statements reflects negatively from a whole host of perspectives and should be taken pretty seriously.
I’d be interested in hearing how you/others at pause AI have tracked how much of this marginal improvements to advocacy you have been doing so far is. What are the wins? What were the costs? Happy to also get on a call with someone about this.
If there are real numbers on this (I know it’s hard in spaces like yours), I’d be curious about hearing why they aren’t often posted on the forum/LW, as that, I think, would be more helpful to people (and tracking the cost-effectiveness of AIS in general is super underrated, so this would be good).
If you don’t have the numbers, I would ask why you are so confident that this is actually the right approach.
What stunt at EAG?
Oh, sorry. I asked my friend, and they said it was Stop AI—not Pause AI. They basically protested in the middle of a talk with the CEA CEO saying things like he is a murderer, which I just think is pretty nuts. That is my bad, though. I have edited that part out of my initial comment.
Yeah they really did us dirty by basically stealing our name when I kicked the founders out of PauseAI because they want to do illegal things and disruptive stunts like that.
Yea, sorry about that. That really sucks.