Passionate about longtermist causes including AI governance, institutional design, and resilience.
Currently focused on AI policy research & implementation, with a background in product management and consulting.
Please feel free to reach out here or on Twitter : https://twitter.com/nikhilmulani
This sounds like a very interesting event! I’d be curious to hear this group’s perspective on the growing influence of business in American politics:
Do they worry about the consequences of Citizens United, SuperPACs, etc with regards to EA cause areas?
What could be the most productive ways for public bodies, EA orgs, and individuals to engage with corporations as increasingly important political actors?
Do they see promising opportunities for public-private collaboration on reducing long-term risks in AI, biosecurity, or other areas?
Cultural values and context of any given company can be very important. For examples where there are counter-weights to profit maximization, you might find this exploration of community stakeholders that are a part of corporate culture in Japan interesting (this community-centeredness also contributes to the unique longevity of Japanese businesses).
When it comes to thinking about board and investment incentives, a nuance to consider is the difference between long-term profit maximization and short-term profits. Outputs of companies with long-term profit maximization seem more often aligned with social benefits than those of companies whose strategies are entirely based on quarter-to-quarter read-outs.
This is an area that I’m curious about and currently doing some independent research in—would love to connect and share thoughts.
Very thought-provoking, thanks for sharing. I agree with the observation that EA is facing a tricky challenge of maintaining a high-trust, agile approach while attempting to build a broader talent pipeline and expand scope for impact.
While these networks grow, filtering for “great people” feels like a critical element to maintaining EA’s distinctive approach. The “growth mindset” matters much more than more superficial characteristics. I appreciate the call-out to the entrepreneurial community: If many of the most successful entrepreneurs reach a peak in their mid-40s after experiencing multiple failures, how could/should that inform EA’s future approaches to engaging and retaining talented people in the community?
Curious to hear people’s answers to this—it’s a tough space to keep up to date in. For high-level summaries of technical developments, I like Import AI (https://jack-clark.net/) and Last Week in AI (https://lastweekin.ai/). But both can be weighted towards a policy/public affairs focus. There are likely newsletters that are better suited for purely keeping tabs on new research papers.
For an annual view of developments, I also like State of AI (https://www.stateof.ai/)
Thanks for putting this together! This is a really helpful summary of recent research, projects and job openings related to longtermism—it can be tough to track all these things otherwise. Looking forward to future issues.
I’d be particularly curious to hear Richard’s thoughts on non-governmental approaches to governance: How robust does he see the corporate governance approaches within labs like OpenAI as being? Does he believe any corporate governance ideas are particularly promising? Additionally, does he see any potential from private sector collaboration or consortia on self-governance, or from non-profit / NGO attempts at monitoring and risk mitigation?