I’m a recent graduate of a Yale M.A. program in global affairs and public policy. Before coming to Yale I served four years as a US Army officer. Before that I studied political science and economics at Johns Hopkins. I love travel, sports, and writing, especially about the moral implications of policy issues.
I was first drawn to EA to maximize the impact of my charitable giving, but now use it to help plan my career as well. My current plan is to focus on U.S. foreign policy in an effort to mitigate the danger that great power competition can have as a cross-cutting risk factor for several types of existential threats. I also love Give Directly, and value altruism that respects the preferences of its intended beneficiaries.
I’m surprised nobody has commented yet, and want to say that I really enjoyed and largely agree with this piece. The logic of needing to accelerate an AGI arms race to stay ahead of China is deeply flawed in ways that mirror unfortunate pathologies in the US foreign policy community, and IMO worsens US national security, for many of the reasons you mention.
Two questions for you:
How politically feasible is it to advance messaging along these lines, given the incoming administration’s tech optimism and zero-sum foreign policy mindset (and indeed, the rare bipartisan consensus on hawkishness towards China?) I could see a lot of folks in the EA community saying “You’re right, of course, but the train has left the station. We as a community lack the power to redirect policymakers’ incentives and perceived interests on this issue any time soon, and the timelines are getting shorter, so we don’t have time to try. Instead of marginalizing ourselves by trying to prevent an arms race that is by now inevitable and well underway, or push for collaborative international frameworks that MAGA has no interest in, it’d be more impactful to work within the existing incentives to slow down China and lobby for whatever marginal safety improvements we can.”
Why did you label the views we disagree with “AGI realism”? Is that the preferred title of their advocates or did you pick the word realism? I ask because I think much of the argument dramatizing the stakes of China getting this before us is linked with liberal internationalist mindsets that see the 21st century as a civilizational struggle between democracy and autocracy, and see AI as just one complicating wrinkle in that big-picture fight. Inversely, many of the voices calling for more restraint in US foreign policy (ex: abandoning hegemony and embracing multipolarity) call themselves realists, and see the path to peace as ensuring a stable and durable balance of power. So I think of it more as a debate between AI hawks and AI doves/restrainers, both of which could be either realists or something else.