Thank you for responding and sorry for the delayed reply.
I’m not totally sure what the distinction is between disrupting business as usual and encouraging meaningful corporate change — in my mind, corporate campaigns do both, the former in service of the latter. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the distinction there.
That being said, I am much less certain than I was a few weeks ago about the “no costs from disrupted business can be sufficiently high to trigger action on AI safety” take, primarily because of what you pointed out: the corporate race dynamics here might make small disruptions much more costly, rather than less. In fact, the higher the financial upside is, the more costly it could be to lose even a tiny edge on the competition. So even if the costs of meaningful safeguards go up in competitive markets, so too do the costs of PR damage or the other setbacks you mention. I hadn’t thought of this when I wrote my comment but it seems pretty obvious to me now, so thanks for pointing it out.
I’m hoping to think more rigorously about why corporate campaigns work in the upcoming weeks, and might follow up here with additional thoughts.
Are you highlighting this as just something like ‘here’s a risk corporate campaigns against AI labs/companies would need to look out for’, or ‘here’s something that makes these kinds of campaigns much less promising’? I agree with the former but not the latter.
Both, I think. I’m still working on this because I’m optimistic that meaningful + robust policies with really granular detail will be developed, but if they aren’t, it would make campaigns less promising in my mind. Maybe what’s going on is something like the Collingridge dilemma, where it takes time for meaningful safeguards to be identified, but time also makes it harder to implement those safeguards.
Curious to hear why you think campaigns are just as promising even if there aren’t detailed asks to make of labs, if I’m understanding you correctly.
Alignment Research Center evals? Apollo Research evals? Maybe you mean something more specific and I’m just not following the distinction you’re making.
Yeah, in my mind, the animal welfare to AI safety analogy is something like this, where (???) is the missing entity that I wish existed:
This is to say that ARC and Apollo are developing eval regimes in the same way Cooks Venture develops slower-growing breeds, but a lab would probably be very reluctant to commit to auditing with a single partner into perpetuity regardless of how demanding the audits are in the same way a food company wouldn’t want to commit to exclusively sourcing breeds developed by Cooks Venture. And activists, too, would have reason to be concerned about an arrangement like this since the chicken breed (or model eval) developer’s standards could drop in the future.
So I wish there was some nonprofit or govt committee with a high degree of trust and few COIs who was tasked with certifying the eval regimes developed by ARC and Apollo (or those developed by academics, or even by labs themselves) — hence why I refer to them as a sort of meta-certifier. Then a lab could commit to something like “all future models will undergo evaluation approved by (meta-certifying body) and the results will be publicly shared,” even if many of the specifics this would entail don’t exist today.
On reflection, though, I really don’t know enough about the AI safety landscape to say with confidence how useful this would be. So take it with a big grain of salt.
Thank you for responding and sorry for the delayed reply.
I’m not totally sure what the distinction is between disrupting business as usual and encouraging meaningful corporate change — in my mind, corporate campaigns do both, the former in service of the latter. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the distinction there.
That being said, I am much less certain than I was a few weeks ago about the “no costs from disrupted business can be sufficiently high to trigger action on AI safety” take, primarily because of what you pointed out: the corporate race dynamics here might make small disruptions much more costly, rather than less. In fact, the higher the financial upside is, the more costly it could be to lose even a tiny edge on the competition. So even if the costs of meaningful safeguards go up in competitive markets, so too do the costs of PR damage or the other setbacks you mention. I hadn’t thought of this when I wrote my comment but it seems pretty obvious to me now, so thanks for pointing it out.
I’m hoping to think more rigorously about why corporate campaigns work in the upcoming weeks, and might follow up here with additional thoughts.
Both, I think. I’m still working on this because I’m optimistic that meaningful + robust policies with really granular detail will be developed, but if they aren’t, it would make campaigns less promising in my mind. Maybe what’s going on is something like the Collingridge dilemma, where it takes time for meaningful safeguards to be identified, but time also makes it harder to implement those safeguards.
Curious to hear why you think campaigns are just as promising even if there aren’t detailed asks to make of labs, if I’m understanding you correctly.
Yeah, in my mind, the animal welfare to AI safety analogy is something like this, where (???) is the missing entity that I wish existed:
G.A.P : Cooks Venture :: (???) : ARC/Apollo
This is to say that ARC and Apollo are developing eval regimes in the same way Cooks Venture develops slower-growing breeds, but a lab would probably be very reluctant to commit to auditing with a single partner into perpetuity regardless of how demanding the audits are in the same way a food company wouldn’t want to commit to exclusively sourcing breeds developed by Cooks Venture. And activists, too, would have reason to be concerned about an arrangement like this since the chicken breed (or model eval) developer’s standards could drop in the future.
So I wish there was some nonprofit or govt committee with a high degree of trust and few COIs who was tasked with certifying the eval regimes developed by ARC and Apollo (or those developed by academics, or even by labs themselves) — hence why I refer to them as a sort of meta-certifier. Then a lab could commit to something like “all future models will undergo evaluation approved by (meta-certifying body) and the results will be publicly shared,” even if many of the specifics this would entail don’t exist today.
On reflection, though, I really don’t know enough about the AI safety landscape to say with confidence how useful this would be. So take it with a big grain of salt.
Hello!
Did you ever do this research on why corporate campaigns work? And if so, would you share it? Thanks!