(Conflict of interest note: I work at ARC, Paul Christiano’s org. Paul did not ask me to write this comment. I first heard about the truck (below) from him, though I later ran into it independently online.)
There is an anonymous group of people called Control AI, whose goal is to convince people to be against responsible scaling policies because they insufficiently constraint AI labs’ actions. See their Twitter account and website (also anonymousEdit: now identifies Andrea Miotti of Conjecture as the director). (I first ran into Control AI via this tweet, which uses color-distorting visual effects to portray Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in an unflattering light, in a way that’s reminiscent of political attack ads.)
Control AI has rented a truck that had been circling London’s Parliament Square. The truck plays a video of “Dr. Paul Christiano (Made ChatGPT Possible; Government AI adviser)” saying that there’s a 10-20% chance of an AI takeover and an overall 50% chance of doom, and of Sam Altman saying that the “bad case” of AGI is “lights out for all of us”. The back of the truck says “Responsible Scaling: No checks, No limits, No control”. The video of Paul seems to me to be an attack on Paul (but see Twitter discussion here).
I currently strongly believe that the authors of this post are either in part responsible for Control AI, or at least have been working with or in contact with Control AI. That’s because of the focus on RSPs and because both Connor Leahy and Gabriel Alfour have retweeted Control AI (which has a relatively small following).
Connor/Gabriel—if you are connected with Control AI, I think it’s important to make this clear, for a few reasons. First, if you’re trying to drive policy change, people should know who you are, at minimum so they can engage with you. Second, I think this is particularly true if the policy campaign involves attacks on people who disagree with you. And third, because I think it’s useful context for understanding this post.
Could you clarify if you have any connection (even informal) with Control AI? If you are affiliated with them, could you describe how you’re affiliated and who else is involved?
EDIT: This Guardian article confirms that Connor is (among others) responsible for Control AI.
The About Us page from the Control AI website has now been updated to say “Andrea Miotti (also working at Conjecture) is director of the campaign.” This wasn’t the case on the 18th of October.
Thumbs up for making the connection between the organizations more transparent/clear.
The video of Paul seems to me to be an attack on Paul (but see Twitter discussion here).
This doesn’t seem right. As the people in the Twitter discussion you link say, it seems to mostly use Paul as a legitimate source of an x-risk probability, with maybe also a bit of critique of him having nevertheless helped build chat-GPT, but neither seems like an attack in a strictly negative sense. It feels like a relatively normal news snippet or something.
I feel confused about the truck. The video seems fine to me and seems kind of decent advocacy. The quotes used seem like accurate representations of what the people presented believe. The part that seems sad is that it might cause people to think the ones pictured also agree with other things that the responsible scaling website says, which seems misleading.
I don’t particularly see a reason to dox the people behind the truck, though I am not totally sure. My bar against doxxing is pretty high, though I do care about people being held accountable for large scale actions they take.
If it is meant as an attack on Paul, then it feels pretty bad/norm-violating to me. I don’t know what general principle I endorse that makes it not okay: maybe something like “don’t attack people in a really public and flashy way unless they’re super high-profile or hold an important public office”? If you’d like I can poke at the feeling more. Seems like some people in the Twitter thread (Alex Lawsen, Neel Nanda) share the feeling.
If I’m wrong and it’s not an attack, I still think they should have gotten Paul’s consent, and I think the fact that it might be interpreted as an attack (by people seeing the truck) is also relevant.
(Obviously, I think the events “this is at least partially an attack on Paul” and “at least one of the authors of this post are connected to Control AI” are positively correlated, since this post is an attack on Paul. My probabilities are roughly 85% and 97%*, respectively.)
*For a broad-ish definition of “connected to”
I don’t particularly see a reason to dox the people behind the truck, though I am not totally sure. My bar against doxxing is pretty high, though I do care about people being held accountable for large scale actions they take.
That’s fair. I think that it would be better for the world if Control AI were not anonymous, and I judge the group negatively for being anonymous. On the other hand, I don’t think I endorse them being doxxed. So perhaps my request to Connor and Gabriel is: please share what connection you have to Control AI, if any, and share what more information you have permission to share.
Connor/Gabriel—if you are connected with Control AI, I think it’s important to make this clear, for a few reasons. First, if you’re trying to drive policy change, people should know who you are, at minimum so they can engage with you. Second, I think this is particularly true if the policy campaign involves attacks on people who disagree with you. And third, because I think it’s useful context for understanding this post.
This seems like a general-purpose case against anonymous political speech that contains criticism (“attacks”) of the opposition. But put like that, it seems like there are lots of reasons people might want to speak anonymously (e.g. to shield themselves from unfair blowback). And your given reasons don’t seem super persuasive—you can engage with people who say they agree with the message (or do broad-ranged speech of your own), reason 2 isn’t actually a reason, and the post was plenty understandable to me without the context.
(Conflict of interest note: I work at ARC, Paul Christiano’s org. Paul did not ask me to write this comment. I first heard about the truck (below) from him, though I later ran into it independently online.)
There is an anonymous group of people called Control AI, whose goal is to convince people to be against responsible scaling policies because they insufficiently constraint AI labs’ actions. See their Twitter account and website (
also anonymousEdit: now identifies Andrea Miotti of Conjecture as the director). (I first ran into Control AI via this tweet, which uses color-distorting visual effects to portray Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in an unflattering light, in a way that’s reminiscent of political attack ads.)Control AI has rented a truck that had been circling London’s Parliament Square. The truck plays a video of “Dr. Paul Christiano (Made ChatGPT Possible; Government AI adviser)” saying that there’s a 10-20% chance of an AI takeover and an overall 50% chance of doom, and of Sam Altman saying that the “bad case” of AGI is “lights out for all of us”. The back of the truck says “Responsible Scaling: No checks, No limits, No control”. The video of Paul seems to me to be an attack on Paul (but see Twitter discussion here).
I currently strongly believe that the authors of this post are either in part responsible for Control AI, or at least have been working with or in contact with Control AI. That’s because of the focus on RSPs and because both Connor Leahy and Gabriel Alfour have retweeted Control AI (which has a relatively small following).
Connor/Gabriel—if you are connected with Control AI, I think it’s important to make this clear, for a few reasons. First, if you’re trying to drive policy change, people should know who you are, at minimum so they can engage with you. Second, I think this is particularly true if the policy campaign involves attacks on people who disagree with you. And third, because I think it’s useful context for understanding this post.
Could you clarify if you have any connection (even informal) with Control AI? If you are affiliated with them, could you describe how you’re affiliated and who else is involved?
EDIT: This Guardian article confirms that Connor is (among others) responsible for Control AI.
The About Us page from the Control AI website has now been updated to say “Andrea Miotti (also working at Conjecture) is director of the campaign.” This wasn’t the case on the 18th of October.
Thumbs up for making the connection between the organizations more transparent/clear.
This doesn’t seem right. As the people in the Twitter discussion you link say, it seems to mostly use Paul as a legitimate source of an x-risk probability, with maybe also a bit of critique of him having nevertheless helped build chat-GPT, but neither seems like an attack in a strictly negative sense. It feels like a relatively normal news snippet or something.
I feel confused about the truck. The video seems fine to me and seems kind of decent advocacy. The quotes used seem like accurate representations of what the people presented believe. The part that seems sad is that it might cause people to think the ones pictured also agree with other things that the responsible scaling website says, which seems misleading.
I don’t particularly see a reason to dox the people behind the truck, though I am not totally sure. My bar against doxxing is pretty high, though I do care about people being held accountable for large scale actions they take.
To elaborate on my feelings about the truck:
If it is meant as an attack on Paul, then it feels pretty bad/norm-violating to me. I don’t know what general principle I endorse that makes it not okay: maybe something like “don’t attack people in a really public and flashy way unless they’re super high-profile or hold an important public office”? If you’d like I can poke at the feeling more. Seems like some people in the Twitter thread (Alex Lawsen, Neel Nanda) share the feeling.
If I’m wrong and it’s not an attack, I still think they should have gotten Paul’s consent, and I think the fact that it might be interpreted as an attack (by people seeing the truck) is also relevant.
(Obviously, I think the events “this is at least partially an attack on Paul” and “at least one of the authors of this post are connected to Control AI” are positively correlated, since this post is an attack on Paul. My probabilities are roughly 85% and 97%*, respectively.)
*For a broad-ish definition of “connected to”
That’s fair. I think that it would be better for the world if Control AI were not anonymous, and I judge the group negatively for being anonymous. On the other hand, I don’t think I endorse them being doxxed. So perhaps my request to Connor and Gabriel is: please share what connection you have to Control AI, if any, and share what more information you have permission to share.
This seems like a general-purpose case against anonymous political speech that contains criticism (“attacks”) of the opposition. But put like that, it seems like there are lots of reasons people might want to speak anonymously (e.g. to shield themselves from unfair blowback). And your given reasons don’t seem super persuasive—you can engage with people who say they agree with the message (or do broad-ranged speech of your own), reason 2 isn’t actually a reason, and the post was plenty understandable to me without the context.