Summary

I cold emailed a Finnish MP. Four weeks later, the government responded to his written question saying they "seek to constructively promote the creation of international regulation on the development of superintelligent AI" (immediately followed by emphasizing the need to balance safety with innovation).

The MP and I met for lunch. For over an hour, he seriously engaged with my arguments that superintelligence would kill everyone and the urgent need for an international agreement to prohibit its development.

Unprompted, he decided to submit a written question, a formal process in Finland that requires the government to respond within 21 days. Four days after our lunch, it was submitted, taking into account suggestions from me and two experts I DM'd: Nate Soares and Charbel-Raphaël Segerie.

It asked how Finland has assessed risks from superintelligence and whether it’s "prepared to promote international regulation that would effectively prevent or restrict the development of superintelligent AI."

The MP started speaking out about AI danger and mainstream Finnish media picked up the story. Most notably, he did an interview alongside a Finnish CS professor on the second-most-watched TV channel in Finland with an estimated 100-200k live viewers.

Inspired by my success, a friend had three meetings about AI danger in a week with MPs from three different parties, all of which went really well.

This shift in receptiveness isn’t just in Finland. Three ControlAI employees agree that since Claude Mythos and the Hugging Face incident, it’s become much easier to push for an international agreement banning superintelligence in meetings with politicians.

If you haven’t asked for a meeting with a politician recently, now’s a good time.

The email

On Monday, August 10, I cold emailed Atte Harjanne, a Finnish MP (Greens).

This was my ~fourth time cold-emailing a Finnish politician. When I lived in Canada (my home country) ~2 years ago, I sent ~7 emails to politicians about AI danger, and when I was living in the UK ~1 year ago, I sent ~4.

This was the first time a politician agreed to meet with me. Why did he agree to meet when others didn’t? There might have been some Finland/Atte-specific factors involved, but there was at least one generalizable factor: Mythos and the Hugging Face incident have made politicians more receptive to AI danger arguments.

My email

Subject: Const

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Luukas Kumpula

Luukas Kumpula