I had not thought about this again since writing the post, until your comment. (Yeah, that seems worrying if mine really is the only post. Though in my [limited] experience with the LW/EA forum search it’s not easy to tell how reliable/comprehensive it is, so there may be related posts that aren’t easy to find.)
I actually had a somewhat different model in mind for how polarization happens: something like “the parties tend to take opposite stances on issues. So if one party takes up an issue, this causes the other party to take up the opposite stance on that issue. So if one party starts to talk more about AI safety than the other, this would cause the other party to take the anti-AI-safety stance, therefore polarization.” (Not saying it’s a good model, but it’s the model I had in the back of my mind.)
Your model of climate polarization seems mostly right to me. I was wondering, though, why it would lead to polarization in particular, rather than, say, everybody just not caring about climate change, or being climate skeptics. I guess the idea is something like: Some climate activists/scientists/etc got concerned about climate change, started spreading the word. Oil corps got concerned this would affect them negatively, started spreading a countermessage. It makes sense that this would lead to a split, where some people care about climate change and some people anti-care about it. But why would the split be along party lines (or even: along ideological lines)? Couple things to say here. First, maybe my model kicks in here: the parties tend to take opposite stances on issues. Maybe the dems picked up the climate-activist side, so the republicans picked up the big-oil side. But was it random which side picked up which? I guess not: the climate-activist case is quite caring-focused, which on Jon Haidt’s model makes it a left issue, while the big-oil case is big-business, which is a republican-flavored issue. (Though the climate-activist case also seemingly has, or at least used to have, a pretty sizeable purity component, which is puzzling on Haidt’s model.)
Applying some of this to the AI case: the activist stuff has already happened. However, the AI corporations (the equiv of big-oil in our climate story) haven’t reacted in the same way big-oil did. At least public-facingly, they’ve actually recognized and embraced the concerns to a sizeable degree (see Google DeepMind, OpenAI, to some degree Facebook).
Though perhaps you don’t think the current AI corps are the equivalent of big-oil; there will be some future AI companies that react more like big oil did.
Either way, this doesn’t totally block polarization from happening: it could still happen via “one party happens to start discussing the issue before the other, the other party takes the opposite stance, voters take on the stances of their party, therefore polarization.”
<politics>
Hadn’t thought of this till seeing your comment, but this might be an argument against Andrew Yang (though he’s just dropped out)---if he had gotten the dem nomination, he might have caused Trump to take up the contrarian stance on AI, causing Trump’s base to become skeptical of AI risk, therefore polarization (or some other variant on the basic “the dems take up the issue first, so the republicans take the opposite stance” story). This may still happen, though with him out it seems less likely.
</politics>
I don’t know if climate activists could have done anything differently in the climate case; don’t know enough about the history of climate activism and how specifically it got as polarized as it is (though as I said, your model seems good at least from the armchair). This may be something worth looking into as a historical case study (though time is of the essence I suppose, since now is probably the time to be doing things to prevent AI polarization).
Thanks for prompting me to think about this again! No promises (pretty busy with school right now) but I may go back and write up the conversation with my friend that I mentioned in the OP, I probably still have the notes from it. And if it really is as neglected as you think, I may take up thinking about it again a bit more seriously.
I think what you said is right, but there’s a more fundamental dynamics behind it. Parties are coalitions, and when you join a coalition, you get support from others in that coalition for your interests, in exchange for your support for their interests. When I said “use political means to try to prevent that”, that includes either building or joining a coalition to increase the political power behind your agenda, and it’s often much easier to join/ally with an existing party than to build a new coalition from scratch. This naturally causes your opposition to join/ally with the other party/coalition.
Applying some of this to the AI case: the activist stuff has already happened. However, the AI corporations (the equiv of big-oil in our climate story) haven’t reacted in the same way big-oil did. At least public-facingly, they’ve actually recognized and embraced the concerns to a sizeable degree (see Google DeepMind, OpenAI, to some degree Facebook).
Another way to look at it though, is that the AI companies have co-opted some of the people concerned with AI risk (those on the more optimistic end of the spectrum) and cowed the rest (the more pessimistic ones, who think humanity should stop or slow down AI development) into silence (or at least only talking quietly amongst themselves). The more pessimistic researchers/activists know that they don’t have nearly enough political power to win any kind of open conflict now, so they are biding their time, trying to better understand AI risk (in part to build a stronger public case for it), doing what they can around the edges, and looking for strategic openings. (The truth is probably somewhere between these two interpretations.)
And if it really is as neglected as you think, I may take up thinking about it again a bit more seriously.
Another way to look at it though, is that the AI companies have co-opted some of the people concerned with AI risk (those on the more optimistic end of the spectrum) and cowed the rest...
Huh, that’s an interesting point.
I’m not sure where I stand on the question of “should we be pulling the brakes now,” but I definitely think it would be good if we had the ability to pull the brakes should it become necessary. It hadn’t really occurred to me that those who think we should be pulling the brakes now would feel quasi-political pressure not to speak out. I assumed the reason there’s not much talk of that option is because it’s so clearly unrealistic at this point; but I’m all in favor of building the capacity to do so (modulo Caplan-style worries about this accidentally going to far and leading to totalitarianism), and it never really occurred to me that this would be a controversial opinion.
It looks like your background is in philosophy
Yep!
check out Problems in AI Alignment that philosophers could potentially contribute to, in case you haven’t come across it already.
I had come across it before, but it was a while ago, so I took another look. I was already planning on working on some stuff in the vicinity of the “Normativity for AI / AI designers” and “Metaethical policing” bullets (namely the problem raised in theseposts by gworley), but looking at it again, the other stuff under those bullets, as well as the metaphilosophy bullet, sound quite interesting. I’m also planning on doing some work on moral uncertainty (which, in addition to its relevance to global priorities research, also has some relevance for AI; based on my cursory understanding, CIRL seems to incorporate the idea of moral uncertainty to some extent), and perhaps other GPI-style topics. AI-strategy/governance stuff, including the topics in the OP, are also interesting, and I’m actually inclined to think that they may be more important than technical AI safety (though not far more important). But three disparate areas, all calling for disparate areas of expertise outside philosophy (AI: compsci; GPR: econ etc; strategy: international relations), feels a bit like too much, and I’m not certain which I ultimately should settle on (though I have a bit of time, I’m at the beginning of my PhD atm). I guess relevant factors are mostly the standard ones: which do I find most motivating/fun to work on, which can I skill-up in fastest/easiest, which is most important/tractable/neglected? And which ones lead to a reasonable back-up plan/off-ramp in case high-risk jobs like academia/EA-org don’t work out?
Forgot one other thing I intend to work on: I’ve seen several people (perhaps even you?) say that the case for AI risk needs to be made more carefully than it has, that’s another project I may potentially work on.
I had not thought about this again since writing the post, until your comment. (Yeah, that seems worrying if mine really is the only post. Though in my [limited] experience with the LW/EA forum search it’s not easy to tell how reliable/comprehensive it is, so there may be related posts that aren’t easy to find.)
I actually had a somewhat different model in mind for how polarization happens: something like “the parties tend to take opposite stances on issues. So if one party takes up an issue, this causes the other party to take up the opposite stance on that issue. So if one party starts to talk more about AI safety than the other, this would cause the other party to take the anti-AI-safety stance, therefore polarization.” (Not saying it’s a good model, but it’s the model I had in the back of my mind.)
Your model of climate polarization seems mostly right to me. I was wondering, though, why it would lead to polarization in particular, rather than, say, everybody just not caring about climate change, or being climate skeptics. I guess the idea is something like: Some climate activists/scientists/etc got concerned about climate change, started spreading the word. Oil corps got concerned this would affect them negatively, started spreading a countermessage. It makes sense that this would lead to a split, where some people care about climate change and some people anti-care about it. But why would the split be along party lines (or even: along ideological lines)? Couple things to say here. First, maybe my model kicks in here: the parties tend to take opposite stances on issues. Maybe the dems picked up the climate-activist side, so the republicans picked up the big-oil side. But was it random which side picked up which? I guess not: the climate-activist case is quite caring-focused, which on Jon Haidt’s model makes it a left issue, while the big-oil case is big-business, which is a republican-flavored issue. (Though the climate-activist case also seemingly has, or at least used to have, a pretty sizeable purity component, which is puzzling on Haidt’s model.)
Applying some of this to the AI case: the activist stuff has already happened. However, the AI corporations (the equiv of big-oil in our climate story) haven’t reacted in the same way big-oil did. At least public-facingly, they’ve actually recognized and embraced the concerns to a sizeable degree (see Google DeepMind, OpenAI, to some degree Facebook).
Though perhaps you don’t think the current AI corps are the equivalent of big-oil; there will be some future AI companies that react more like big oil did.
Either way, this doesn’t totally block polarization from happening: it could still happen via “one party happens to start discussing the issue before the other, the other party takes the opposite stance, voters take on the stances of their party, therefore polarization.”
<politics>
Hadn’t thought of this till seeing your comment, but this might be an argument against Andrew Yang (though he’s just dropped out)---if he had gotten the dem nomination, he might have caused Trump to take up the contrarian stance on AI, causing Trump’s base to become skeptical of AI risk, therefore polarization (or some other variant on the basic “the dems take up the issue first, so the republicans take the opposite stance” story). This may still happen, though with him out it seems less likely.
</politics>
I don’t know if climate activists could have done anything differently in the climate case; don’t know enough about the history of climate activism and how specifically it got as polarized as it is (though as I said, your model seems good at least from the armchair). This may be something worth looking into as a historical case study (though time is of the essence I suppose, since now is probably the time to be doing things to prevent AI polarization).
Thanks for prompting me to think about this again! No promises (pretty busy with school right now) but I may go back and write up the conversation with my friend that I mentioned in the OP, I probably still have the notes from it. And if it really is as neglected as you think, I may take up thinking about it again a bit more seriously.
I think what you said is right, but there’s a more fundamental dynamics behind it. Parties are coalitions, and when you join a coalition, you get support from others in that coalition for your interests, in exchange for your support for their interests. When I said “use political means to try to prevent that”, that includes either building or joining a coalition to increase the political power behind your agenda, and it’s often much easier to join/ally with an existing party than to build a new coalition from scratch. This naturally causes your opposition to join/ally with the other party/coalition.
Another way to look at it though, is that the AI companies have co-opted some of the people concerned with AI risk (those on the more optimistic end of the spectrum) and cowed the rest (the more pessimistic ones, who think humanity should stop or slow down AI development) into silence (or at least only talking quietly amongst themselves). The more pessimistic researchers/activists know that they don’t have nearly enough political power to win any kind of open conflict now, so they are biding their time, trying to better understand AI risk (in part to build a stronger public case for it), doing what they can around the edges, and looking for strategic openings. (The truth is probably somewhere between these two interpretations.)
Sounds good to me. It looks like your background is in philosophy, and I never thought I’d be seriously thinking about politics myself, but comparative advantage can be counter-intuitive. BTW, please check out Problems in AI Alignment that philosophers could potentially contribute to, in case you haven’t come across it already.
Huh, that’s an interesting point.
I’m not sure where I stand on the question of “should we be pulling the brakes now,” but I definitely think it would be good if we had the ability to pull the brakes should it become necessary. It hadn’t really occurred to me that those who think we should be pulling the brakes now would feel quasi-political pressure not to speak out. I assumed the reason there’s not much talk of that option is because it’s so clearly unrealistic at this point; but I’m all in favor of building the capacity to do so (modulo Caplan-style worries about this accidentally going to far and leading to totalitarianism), and it never really occurred to me that this would be a controversial opinion.
Yep!
I had come across it before, but it was a while ago, so I took another look. I was already planning on working on some stuff in the vicinity of the “Normativity for AI / AI designers” and “Metaethical policing” bullets (namely the problem raised in these posts by gworley), but looking at it again, the other stuff under those bullets, as well as the metaphilosophy bullet, sound quite interesting. I’m also planning on doing some work on moral uncertainty (which, in addition to its relevance to global priorities research, also has some relevance for AI; based on my cursory understanding, CIRL seems to incorporate the idea of moral uncertainty to some extent), and perhaps other GPI-style topics. AI-strategy/governance stuff, including the topics in the OP, are also interesting, and I’m actually inclined to think that they may be more important than technical AI safety (though not far more important). But three disparate areas, all calling for disparate areas of expertise outside philosophy (AI: compsci; GPR: econ etc; strategy: international relations), feels a bit like too much, and I’m not certain which I ultimately should settle on (though I have a bit of time, I’m at the beginning of my PhD atm). I guess relevant factors are mostly the standard ones: which do I find most motivating/fun to work on, which can I skill-up in fastest/easiest, which is most important/tractable/neglected? And which ones lead to a reasonable back-up plan/off-ramp in case high-risk jobs like academia/EA-org don’t work out?
Forgot one other thing I intend to work on: I’ve seen several people (perhaps even you?) say that the case for AI risk needs to be made more carefully than it has, that’s another project I may potentially work on.