I do think evaporative cooling is a concern, especially if everyone (or a very significant amount) of people left. But I think on the margin more people should be leaving to work in govt.
I also suspect that a lot of systemic incentives will keep a greater-than-optimal proportion of safety-conscious people at labs as opposed to governments (labs pay more, labs are faster and have less bureaucracy, lab people are much more informed about AI, labs are more “cool/fun/fast-paced”, lots of govt jobs force you to move locations, etc.)
I also think it depends on the specific lab– EG in light of the recent OpenAI departures, I suspect there’s a stronger case for staying at OpenAI right now than for DeepMind or Anthropic.
I do think evaporative cooling is a concern, especially if everyone (or a very significant amount) of people left. But I think on the margin more people should be leaving to work in govt.
I also suspect that a lot of systemic incentives will keep a greater-than-optimal proportion of safety-conscious people at labs as opposed to governments (labs pay more, labs are faster and have less bureaucracy, lab people are much more informed about AI, labs are more “cool/fun/fast-paced”, lots of govt jobs force you to move locations, etc.)
I also think it depends on the specific lab– EG in light of the recent OpenAI departures, I suspect there’s a stronger case for staying at OpenAI right now than for DeepMind or Anthropic.