Nick, Anders and Toby have been consulted by government agencies in the past, particularly Nick has done that several times (even by the Thailand’s government apparently). If your concern is influence over government, FHI wins, given I don’t think movement building would get us as far as having a Prime Minister meeting with FHI staff. It would have to be one serious movement to match just one or two meetings. It’s likely that there aren’t even enough eligible brains for a “AI-risks movement” of such scale.
However, it is not the case “influence over the government” should be the most important criteria. Mainly, because right now we wouldn’t even know exactly what to tell them, and it might take decades until we do. Hence, the most important criteria is level of basic research. The mere fact your question hasn’t any clear answers means we need more basic research, and thus that MIRI/ FHI have preference. I couldn’t know whether FHI or MIRI would be better. As a wild guess, I would say FHI does more research but that it somehow feeds from MIRI non-academic flexibility and movement building. Likely, whichever had the preference over resources would lose this preference relatively fast as it outgrew the other.
On the other hand, I have heard MIRI/FHI/CEA staff claiming they are much more in need of qualified people than money. So, if CFAR is increasing qualification then they ought to have priority. But it’s not clear if they are really doing that yet.
“On the other hand, I have heard MIRI/FHI/CEA staff claiming they are much more in need of qualified people than money”
“Getting the right people is the most important thing” is a general principle at FHI. However, in my 2.5 years managing FHI there have consistently been people we haven’t been able to hire and research areas we haven’t been able to address, although we’ve been successful in expanding and improving our funding situation quite a lot. If you presented us with another qualified person right now, I don’t see how we would be able to hire them at present (although that may not be the case in some months, depending on grant successes, etc). We’ve also consistently been understaffed and underfunded on core operations, and thus have only been able to avail of a fraction of the opportunities available to us.
Note that Toby is a trustee of CEA and did most of his government consulting due to GWWC, not the FHI, so it’s not clear that FHI wins out in terms of influence over government.
Moreover, if your concern is influence over government, CEA could still beat FHI (even if FHI is doing very high level advocacy) by acting as a multiplier on the FHI’s efforts (and similar orgs): $1 donated to CEA could lead to more than $1 of financial or human capital delivered to the FHI or similar. I’m not claiming this is happening, but just pointing out that it’s too simple to say FHI wins out just because they’re doing some really good advocacy.
Disclaimer: I’m the Executive Director of 80,000 Hours, which is part of CEA.
Re: point 1: The bulk of our policy consultations to date have actually been Nick Bostrom, although Anders Sandberg has done quite a bit, Toby has been regularly consulting with the UK government recently, and I’ve been doing some lately (mostly wearing my CSER hat, but drawing on my FHI expertise, so I would give FHI credit there ;) ) and others have also done bits and pieces.
I don’t have the numbers of the top of my head, but the bulk of the consultations in my list are due to Nick. I believe there are even much more done by him previous to FHI even existing back in the 90s. Nonetheless, I would guess he is probably very much willing to transfer the advocacy to CEA and similar organizations, as it seems to be already happening. In my opinion, that isn’t FHI main role at all, even though they been doing it a lot. As a wild guess, I would be inclined to say he probably actively rejects a few consultations by now. As I said, we need research. Influence over the government is useless—and perhaps harmful—without it.
While they work together, I’m not sure advocacy and influence over the government are quite the same. I think advocacy here might just be seen as close to advertising and movement building, which in turn will create political pressure. Quite another thing is to be asked by the government to offer ones opinion.
I think both research and advocacy (both to governments and among individuals) are highly important, and it’s very unclear which is more important at the margin.
It’s too simple to say basic research is more important, because advocacy could lead to hugely increased funding for basic research.
Nick, Anders and Toby have been consulted by government agencies in the past, particularly Nick has done that several times (even by the Thailand’s government apparently). If your concern is influence over government, FHI wins, given I don’t think movement building would get us as far as having a Prime Minister meeting with FHI staff. It would have to be one serious movement to match just one or two meetings. It’s likely that there aren’t even enough eligible brains for a “AI-risks movement” of such scale.
However, it is not the case “influence over the government” should be the most important criteria. Mainly, because right now we wouldn’t even know exactly what to tell them, and it might take decades until we do. Hence, the most important criteria is level of basic research. The mere fact your question hasn’t any clear answers means we need more basic research, and thus that MIRI/ FHI have preference. I couldn’t know whether FHI or MIRI would be better. As a wild guess, I would say FHI does more research but that it somehow feeds from MIRI non-academic flexibility and movement building. Likely, whichever had the preference over resources would lose this preference relatively fast as it outgrew the other.
On the other hand, I have heard MIRI/FHI/CEA staff claiming they are much more in need of qualified people than money. So, if CFAR is increasing qualification then they ought to have priority. But it’s not clear if they are really doing that yet.
“On the other hand, I have heard MIRI/FHI/CEA staff claiming they are much more in need of qualified people than money”
“Getting the right people is the most important thing” is a general principle at FHI. However, in my 2.5 years managing FHI there have consistently been people we haven’t been able to hire and research areas we haven’t been able to address, although we’ve been successful in expanding and improving our funding situation quite a lot. If you presented us with another qualified person right now, I don’t see how we would be able to hire them at present (although that may not be the case in some months, depending on grant successes, etc). We’ve also consistently been understaffed and underfunded on core operations, and thus have only been able to avail of a fraction of the opportunities available to us.
Note that Toby is a trustee of CEA and did most of his government consulting due to GWWC, not the FHI, so it’s not clear that FHI wins out in terms of influence over government.
Moreover, if your concern is influence over government, CEA could still beat FHI (even if FHI is doing very high level advocacy) by acting as a multiplier on the FHI’s efforts (and similar orgs): $1 donated to CEA could lead to more than $1 of financial or human capital delivered to the FHI or similar. I’m not claiming this is happening, but just pointing out that it’s too simple to say FHI wins out just because they’re doing some really good advocacy.
Disclaimer: I’m the Executive Director of 80,000 Hours, which is part of CEA.
Re: point 1: The bulk of our policy consultations to date have actually been Nick Bostrom, although Anders Sandberg has done quite a bit, Toby has been regularly consulting with the UK government recently, and I’ve been doing some lately (mostly wearing my CSER hat, but drawing on my FHI expertise, so I would give FHI credit there ;) ) and others have also done bits and pieces.
I don’t have the numbers of the top of my head, but the bulk of the consultations in my list are due to Nick. I believe there are even much more done by him previous to FHI even existing back in the 90s. Nonetheless, I would guess he is probably very much willing to transfer the advocacy to CEA and similar organizations, as it seems to be already happening. In my opinion, that isn’t FHI main role at all, even though they been doing it a lot. As a wild guess, I would be inclined to say he probably actively rejects a few consultations by now. As I said, we need research. Influence over the government is useless—and perhaps harmful—without it.
While they work together, I’m not sure advocacy and influence over the government are quite the same. I think advocacy here might just be seen as close to advertising and movement building, which in turn will create political pressure. Quite another thing is to be asked by the government to offer ones opinion.
I think both research and advocacy (both to governments and among individuals) are highly important, and it’s very unclear which is more important at the margin.
It’s too simple to say basic research is more important, because advocacy could lead to hugely increased funding for basic research.