I’m not convinced that the government wouldn’t be the riskier approach. Their incentives often don’t really lie with the stated missions of the agencies in charge. The official purposes of government are more aligned with us, but the actual purposes are not aligned in many cases. For profit corporations, on the other hand, are forced by the profit motive to have substantially more inherent alignment (though it can still be pretty low.). Governments are likely to mandate solutions that won’t or can’t work.
That said, the corporations are only aligned at all with humanity by virtue of being full of humans, and relying on human customers.
In general, when it isn’t clear what government should do, it is usually better that it doesn’t act at all (though not in every case.).
That said, the actual Manhattan project was almost completely separate from outsiders, and the government could very well try out a whole bunch of alignment strategies in general, while releasing those that are likely to work for further scrutiny at the later stages. This would be especially useful for slow takeoff scenarios.
Many would argue that an AI arms race is already developing between US companies and China.
(Note: I am quite skeptical of near future AI danger. I clearly believe in slow or no takeoff.)
I’m not convinced that the government wouldn’t be the riskier approach. Their incentives often don’t really lie with the stated missions of the agencies in charge. The official purposes of government are more aligned with us, but the actual purposes are not aligned in many cases. For profit corporations, on the other hand, are forced by the profit motive to have substantially more inherent alignment (though it can still be pretty low.). Governments are likely to mandate solutions that won’t or can’t work.
That said, the corporations are only aligned at all with humanity by virtue of being full of humans, and relying on human customers.
In general, when it isn’t clear what government should do, it is usually better that it doesn’t act at all (though not in every case.).
That said, the actual Manhattan project was almost completely separate from outsiders, and the government could very well try out a whole bunch of alignment strategies in general, while releasing those that are likely to work for further scrutiny at the later stages. This would be especially useful for slow takeoff scenarios.
Many would argue that an AI arms race is already developing between US companies and China.
(Note: I am quite skeptical of near future AI danger. I clearly believe in slow or no takeoff.)