I feel a bit reticent about pause advocacy, altho I have to admit I’m not familiar with the details (and I’m not feeling so negative about it that I want to spend a bunch of time trashing it). My attempt to flesh out why:
I’m pretty influenced by the type of libertarian political philosophy that says that hastily-assembled policy proposals can have big negative unintended side effects, especially when such policy proposals involve giving discretionary control over something to a government.
I’m pessimistic about our odds of surviving really powerful AI, but not so pessimistic that I think p(doom) couldn’t be 10 percentage points higher.
Pause advocacy seems to seek compromise with normal people in order to get their policy proposals passed—an obviously good strategy on some level, but I kind of hate policy proposals that normal people like! This is doubly true for polities where it’s easiest to start passing serious tech regulation (California, the EU).
Relatedly, I have the impression that pause policy advocacy tends to look like taking popular policies and promoting those that slow down AI the most, rather than doing something like mandatory AI liability insurance which seems like it’s close to optimal, then adjusting it to be popular with lots of people.
I worry that “give more discretionary control over AI to such-and-such political body” just produces worse decisions.
Anyway that’s why I have some sort of instinctive negative reaction, but again I’m not very familiar with the details and I’m sure different people are doing different things etc.
I feel a bit reticent about pause advocacy, altho I have to admit I’m not familiar with the details (and I’m not feeling so negative about it that I want to spend a bunch of time trashing it). My attempt to flesh out why:
I’m pretty influenced by the type of libertarian political philosophy that says that hastily-assembled policy proposals can have big negative unintended side effects, especially when such policy proposals involve giving discretionary control over something to a government.
I’m pessimistic about our odds of surviving really powerful AI, but not so pessimistic that I think p(doom) couldn’t be 10 percentage points higher.
Pause advocacy seems to seek compromise with normal people in order to get their policy proposals passed—an obviously good strategy on some level, but I kind of hate policy proposals that normal people like! This is doubly true for polities where it’s easiest to start passing serious tech regulation (California, the EU).
Relatedly, I have the impression that pause policy advocacy tends to look like taking popular policies and promoting those that slow down AI the most, rather than doing something like mandatory AI liability insurance which seems like it’s close to optimal, then adjusting it to be popular with lots of people.
I worry that “give more discretionary control over AI to such-and-such political body” just produces worse decisions.
Anyway that’s why I have some sort of instinctive negative reaction, but again I’m not very familiar with the details and I’m sure different people are doing different things etc.