Orpheus16's Shortform

Orpheus16

This is a special post for quick takes by Orpheus16. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.

Recent Senate hearing includes testimony from Helen Toner and William Saunders.

Both statements are explicit about AGI risks & emphasize the importance of transparency & whistleblower mechanisms.
William's statement acknowledges that he and others doubt that OpenAI's safety work will be sufficient.
- "OpenAI will say that they are improving. I and other employees who resigned doubt they will be ready in time. This is true not just with OpenAI; the incentives to prioritize rapid development apply to the entire industry. This is why a policy response is needed."
Helen's statement provides an interesting paragraph about China at the end.
- "A closing note on China: The specter of ceding U.S. technological leadership to China is often treated as a knock-down argument against implementing regulations of any kind. Based on my research on the Chinese AI ecosystem and U.S.-China technology competition more broadly, I think this argument is not nearly as strong as it seems at first glance. We should certainly be mindful of how regulation can affect the pace of innovation at home, and keep a close eye on how our competitors and adversaries are developing and using AI. But looking in depth at Chinese AI development, the AI regulations they are already imposing, and the macro headwinds they face leaves me with the conclusion that they are far from being poised to overtake the United States.6 The fact that targeted, adaptive regulation does not have to slow down U.S. innovation—and in fact can actively support it—only strengthens this point."

Full hearing here (I haven't watched it yet.)

6Ben Pace2y

Appreciate the link (and for others, here's an archived version without the paywall.) I update toward a model of Helen's statements here not being very representative of what people in DC feel comfortable saying aloud, though to me it's still nice to know that literally anyone is able to say these words.

12davekasten2y

Generally, it is difficult to understate how completely the PRC is seen as a bad-faith actor in DC these days. Many folks saw them engage in mass economic espionage for a decade while repeatedly promising to stop; those folks are now more senior in their careers than those formative moments. Then COVID happened, and while not everyone believes in the lab leak hypothesis, basically everyone believes that the PRC sure as heck reflexively covered up whether or not they were actually culpable. (Edit: to be clear, reporting, not endorsing, these claims)

Thanks for the info.

This is an area where I expect a lot of my info sources to be pretty adversarial, and furthermore I haven't looked into these issues a great deal, so I don't have a developed perspective on how bad-faith the Chinese government's agreements and information sources are.

I think I recall pretty adversarial information-sharing behavior from China toward the rest of the world in March 2020 (which I consider a massive deal), though I'd have to re-read Wikipedia and LessWrong to recall what exactly was going on.

Orpheus16's Shortform

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Orpheus16's Shortform

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