That’s a good point. But not all of the imposed costs were strategically wise, so the backlash didn’t need to be that large to get the important things done. It could be argued that the most hardline, strident environmentalists might’ve cost the overall movement immensely by pushing for minor environmental gains that come at large perceived costs.
I think that did happen, and that similarly pushing for AI safety measures should be carefully weighed in cost vs benefit. The opposite argument is that we should just get everyone used to paying costs for ai safety (in terms of limiting ai progress that would not probably be highly dangerous). I think that strategy backfired badly for environmentalism and would backfire for us.
Maybe. Again, I’m not expert in PR and I’d really like to have people who are expert involved in coming up with strategies.
I think at least some of this backlash comes from Earth being very bad at coordination. “To get moderate result you should scare opponents with radicals” and other negotiation frictions.
Sure. But scaring opponents with inflated arguments and demands by radicals didn’t seem to work well for the environmental movement, so the AI safety movement probably shouldn’t employ those tactics.
To clarify in more general way: Earth is bad in coordination in a sense that you can’t expect that if industrial producer dumps toxic waste into environment, special government agency will walk in with premise: “hey, you seem to destroy environmental commons to get profits, let’s negotiate point on Pareto frontier in space of environmental commons-profits which leave both of us not very upset”.
That’s a good point. But not all of the imposed costs were strategically wise, so the backlash didn’t need to be that large to get the important things done. It could be argued that the most hardline, strident environmentalists might’ve cost the overall movement immensely by pushing for minor environmental gains that come at large perceived costs.
I think that did happen, and that similarly pushing for AI safety measures should be carefully weighed in cost vs benefit. The opposite argument is that we should just get everyone used to paying costs for ai safety (in terms of limiting ai progress that would not probably be highly dangerous). I think that strategy backfired badly for environmentalism and would backfire for us.
Maybe. Again, I’m not expert in PR and I’d really like to have people who are expert involved in coming up with strategies.
I think at least some of this backlash comes from Earth being very bad at coordination. “To get moderate result you should scare opponents with radicals” and other negotiation frictions.
Sure. But scaring opponents with inflated arguments and demands by radicals didn’t seem to work well for the environmental movement, so the AI safety movement probably shouldn’t employ those tactics.
To clarify in more general way: Earth is bad in coordination in a sense that you can’t expect that if industrial producer dumps toxic waste into environment, special government agency will walk in with premise: “hey, you seem to destroy environmental commons to get profits, let’s negotiate point on Pareto frontier in space of environmental commons-profits which leave both of us not very upset”.