One concrete reason I don’t buy the “pivotal act” framing is that it seems to me that AI-assisted minimally invasive surveillance, with the backing of a few major national governments (including at least the US) and international bodies should be enough to get us out of the “acute risk period”, without the uncooperativeness or sharp/discrete nature that “pivotal act” language will entail.
This also seems to me to be very possible without further advancements in AI, but more advanced (narrow?) AI can a) reduce the costs of minimally invasive surveillance (e.g. by offering stronger privacy guarantees like limiting the number of bits that gets transferred upwards) and b) make it clearer to policymakers and others the need for such surveillance.
I definitely think AI-powered surveillance is a dual-edged weapon (obviously it also makes it easier to implement stable totalitarianism, among other concerns), so I’m not endorsing this strategy without hesitation.
Worldwide AI-powered surveillance of compute resources and biology labs, accompanied by enforcement upon detection of harmful activity, is my central example of the pivotal act which could save us. Currently that would be a very big deal, since it would need to include surveillance of private military resources of all nation states. Including data centers, AI labs, and biology labs. Even those hidden in secret military bunkers. For one nation to attempt to nonconsensually impose this on all others would constitute a dramatic act of war.
One concrete reason I don’t buy the “pivotal act” framing is that it seems to me that AI-assisted minimally invasive surveillance, with the backing of a few major national governments (including at least the US) and international bodies should be enough to get us out of the “acute risk period”, without the uncooperativeness or sharp/discrete nature that “pivotal act” language will entail.
This also seems to me to be very possible without further advancements in AI, but more advanced (narrow?) AI can a) reduce the costs of minimally invasive surveillance (e.g. by offering stronger privacy guarantees like limiting the number of bits that gets transferred upwards) and b) make it clearer to policymakers and others the need for such surveillance.
I definitely think AI-powered surveillance is a dual-edged weapon (obviously it also makes it easier to implement stable totalitarianism, among other concerns), so I’m not endorsing this strategy without hesitation.
A very similar strategy is listed as a borderline example of a pivotal act, on the pivotal act page:
Worldwide AI-powered surveillance of compute resources and biology labs, accompanied by enforcement upon detection of harmful activity, is my central example of the pivotal act which could save us. Currently that would be a very big deal, since it would need to include surveillance of private military resources of all nation states. Including data centers, AI labs, and biology labs. Even those hidden in secret military bunkers. For one nation to attempt to nonconsensually impose this on all others would constitute a dramatic act of war.