Modern congressional staffers are the product of Goodhart’s law; ~50-100 years ago, they were the ones that ran congress de-facto, so all the businessmen and voters wanted to talk to them, so the policymaking ended up moving elsewhere. Just like what happened with congressmen themselves ~100-150 years ago. Congressional staffers today primarily take constituent calls from voters, and make interest groups think they’re being listened to. Akash’s accomplishments came from wading through that bullshit, meeting people through people until he managed to find some gems.
Most policymaking today is called in from outside, with lobbyists having the domain-expertise needed to write the bills, and senior congressional staffers (like the legislative directors and legislative assistants here) overseeing the process, usually without getting very picky about the details.
It’s not like congressmembers have no power, but they’re just one part of what’s called an “Iron triangle”, the congressional lawmakers, the executive branch bureaucracies (e.g. FDA, CDC, DoD, NSA), and the private sector companies (e.g. Walmart, Lockheed, Microsoft, Comcast), with the lobbyists circulating around the three, negotiating and cutting deals between them. It’s incredibly corrupt and always has been, but not all-crushingly corrupt like African governments. It’s like the Military Industrial Complex, except that’s actually a bad example because congress is increasingly out of the loop de-facto on foreign policy (most structures are idiosyncratic, because the fundamental building block is people who are thinking of ways to negotiate backdoor deals).
People in the executive branch/bureaucracies like the DoD have more power on interesting things like foreign policy, Congress is more powerful for things that have been entrenched for decades like farming policy. Think tank people have no power but they’re much less stupid and have domain expertise and are often called up to help write bills instead of lobbyists.
I don’t know how AI policy is made in Congress, I jumped ship from domestic AI policy to foreign AI policy 3.5 years ago in order to focus more on the incentives from the US-China angle, Akash is the one to ask about where AI policymaking happens in congress, as he was the one actually there deep in the maze (maybe via DM because he didn’t describe it in this post).
I strongly recommend people talking to John Wentworth about AI policy, even if he doesn’t know much at first; after looking at Wentworth’s OpenAI dialog, he’s currently my top predicted candidate for “person who starts spending 2 hours a week thinking about AI policy instead of technical alignment, and thinks up galaxy brained solutions that break the stalemates that vexed the AI policy people for years”.
Modern congressional staffers are the product of Goodhart’s law; ~50-100 years ago, they were the ones that ran congress de-facto, so all the businessmen and voters wanted to talk to them, so the policymaking ended up moving elsewhere. Just like what happened with congressmen themselves ~100-150 years ago. Congressional staffers today primarily take constituent calls from voters, and make interest groups think they’re being listened to. Akash’s accomplishments came from wading through that bullshit, meeting people through people until he managed to find some gems.
Most policymaking today is called in from outside, with lobbyists having the domain-expertise needed to write the bills, and senior congressional staffers (like the legislative directors and legislative assistants here) overseeing the process, usually without getting very picky about the details.
It’s not like congressmembers have no power, but they’re just one part of what’s called an “Iron triangle”, the congressional lawmakers, the executive branch bureaucracies (e.g. FDA, CDC, DoD, NSA), and the private sector companies (e.g. Walmart, Lockheed, Microsoft, Comcast), with the lobbyists circulating around the three, negotiating and cutting deals between them. It’s incredibly corrupt and always has been, but not all-crushingly corrupt like African governments. It’s like the Military Industrial Complex, except that’s actually a bad example because congress is increasingly out of the loop de-facto on foreign policy (most structures are idiosyncratic, because the fundamental building block is people who are thinking of ways to negotiate backdoor deals).
People in the executive branch/bureaucracies like the DoD have more power on interesting things like foreign policy, Congress is more powerful for things that have been entrenched for decades like farming policy. Think tank people have no power but they’re much less stupid and have domain expertise and are often called up to help write bills instead of lobbyists.
I don’t know how AI policy is made in Congress, I jumped ship from domestic AI policy to foreign AI policy 3.5 years ago in order to focus more on the incentives from the US-China angle, Akash is the one to ask about where AI policymaking happens in congress, as he was the one actually there deep in the maze (maybe via DM because he didn’t describe it in this post).
I strongly recommend people talking to John Wentworth about AI policy, even if he doesn’t know much at first; after looking at Wentworth’s OpenAI dialog, he’s currently my top predicted candidate for “person who starts spending 2 hours a week thinking about AI policy instead of technical alignment, and thinks up galaxy brained solutions that break the stalemates that vexed the AI policy people for years”.