And if you have no resumption condition—you want a stop rather than a pause—I empathize with that position but I don’t think it’s (yet) realistic. As I discussed above, it requires labs and governments to sacrifice too much present value (rather than just potential future value), isn’t legibly risk-based, doesn’t provide early wins, etc. Furthermore, I think the best way to actually make a full stop happen is still going to look like my story above, just with RSP thresholds that are essentially impossible to meet.
I mean, whether something’s realistic and whether something’s actionable are two different things (both separate from whether something’s nebulous) - even if it’s hard to make a pause happen, I have a decent guess about what I’d want to do to up those odds: protest, write to my congress-person, etc.
As to the realism, I think it’s more realistic than I think you think it is. My impression of AI Impacts’ technological temptation work is that governments are totally willing to enact policies that impoverish their citizens without requiring a rigourous CBA. Early wins does seem like an important consideration, but you can imagine trying to get some early wins by e.g. banning AI from being used in certain domains, banning people from developing advanced AI without doing X, Y, or Z.
I mean, whether something’s realistic and whether something’s actionable are two different things (both separate from whether something’s nebulous) - even if it’s hard to make a pause happen, I have a decent guess about what I’d want to do to up those odds: protest, write to my congress-person, etc.
Sure—I just think it’d be better to spend that energy advocating for good RSPs instead.
To be clear, the whole point of my post is that I am in favor of pausing/stopping AI development—I just think the best way to do that is via RSPs.
Is the idea that an indefinite pause is unactionable? If so, I’m not sure why you think that.
I talk about that here:
I mean, whether something’s realistic and whether something’s actionable are two different things (both separate from whether something’s nebulous) - even if it’s hard to make a pause happen, I have a decent guess about what I’d want to do to up those odds: protest, write to my congress-person, etc.
As to the realism, I think it’s more realistic than I think you think it is. My impression of AI Impacts’ technological temptation work is that governments are totally willing to enact policies that impoverish their citizens without requiring a rigourous CBA. Early wins does seem like an important consideration, but you can imagine trying to get some early wins by e.g. banning AI from being used in certain domains, banning people from developing advanced AI without doing X, Y, or Z.
Sure—I just think it’d be better to spend that energy advocating for good RSPs instead.
To be clear, the whole point of my post is that I am in favor of pausing/stopping AI development—I just think the best way to do that is via RSPs.