At some point in the future, it seems plausible that there will be a conversation in which people decide whether or not to deploy a potentially risky AI system. So one class of interventions to consider is interventions that make such conversations go well. This includes raising awareness about specific problems and risks, but could also include identifying people who are likely to be involved in such conversations _and_ concerned about AI risk, and helping them prepare for such conversations through training, resources, and practice. This latter intervention hasn’t been done yet: some simple examples of potential interventions would be generating official lists of AI safety problems and solutions which can be pointed to in such conversations, or doing “practice runs” of these conversations.
Planned opinion:
I certainly agree that we should be thinking about how we can convince key decision makers of the level of risk of the systems they are building (whatever that level of risk is). I think that on the current margin it’s much more likely that this is best done through better estimation and explanation of risks with AI systems, but it seems likely that the interventions laid out here will become more important in the future.
Planned summary for the Alignment Newsletter:
Planned opinion:
Sounds good. Thanks! My current opinion is basically not that different from yours.