Gideon Futerman

Its time to ensure control over the future of AI is in the hands of everyday people. Ban superintelligence now.

[Doug Calidas @DougCalidas]

For those asking why we oppose the Obernolte-Trahan proposal. This is why.

Cut the preemption provision and we’ll applaud the project. But this is a poison pill.

[Gideon Futerman @GFuterman]

@TheZvi I think broadly AI Safety advocates have said that this bill is not worth trading for preemption

[Gideon Futerman @GFuterman]

AI safety experts need to be talking to politicians FAR more often than they are

[Gideon Futerman @GFuterman]

I'll be giving a talk on the politics of AI Safety in Oxford tomorrow, would love people to attend (especially grantmakers, because the messages are most actionable from them!)

[Gideon Futerman @GFuterman]

What if someone decided to amend the Oberalte-Trahan bill to remove the preemption clause?
Surely these two care enough about the risks that, assuming they can't get it through with broad preemption, they'd be happy to accept an amendment to at least pass it with no preemption?

[Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh @S_OhEigeartaigh]

Highly important and impactful roles in a remarkable organisation. Consider doing a tour of service, your world needs you.

[Gideon Futerman @GFuterman]

I will trust it when I see any costly signals.
First step could be to #LetLehaneLeave or should it be #CutChris?
If OpenAI employees were serious, this is what they would demand

[Jason Wolfe @w01fe]

I’m happy OpenAI put out this statement. Personally I really dislike a lot of things I’ve heard about LTF, and I’ve donated in personal capacity to Bores.

This is just a small step and people may still rightly be skeptical, but I hope we can earn trust through our actions going forward. One thing I’ve learned through being more engaged in our policy work lately is that there are so many people at OpenAI both inside and outside Global Affairs who care deeply about how the right policies could help ensure that AGI benefits all of humanity.

[Gideon Futerman @GFuterman]

For those interested (grantmakers who I know have liked the above tweet!), I think I have multiple extremely promising uses for money in this area

[Gideon Futerman @GFuterman]

It seems very clear to me that work on advocacy for ensuring AI is safe is primarily constrained by funding, not by talent or public will.
The political will will continue to rise, but without funding flowing, it will be difficult to succeed early enough.

[Gideon Futerman @GFuterman]

This appears to be true even when I speak to people I know across the other side of the political spectrum as well - the political will is growing, and the talent could be there if only for the money.

[Judd Rosenblatt @juddrosenblatt]

OpenAI Foundation has a unique opportunity to heavily fund real AI Alignment R&D

Instead, they're making the same old mistakes:

1. pretending the labs are investing enough in alignment
2. prioritizing "evals" and "infrastructure" instead of the R&D actually needed here

[Gideon Futerman @GFuterman]

I rarely agree with Dean.
Dean is dead right here.
Just because people say the right Shibboleths, does not mean the political economy will play out in favour of avoiding extinction.
We need to play it right.

[Dean W. Ball @deanwball]

Consider the political economy problems that might arise if (a) the U.S. government is financially dependent upon a thriving AI industry to finance ambitious new redistribution schemes and also (b) misaligned AI is an actual real-world problem but debated/very hard to detect. In other words, what if the “Yudkowsky school” is right and the only actual long-term solution to misalignment is some sort of an AI pause or ban, which USG structural dependence for new social welfare benefits would render politically impossible to implement.

If you are going to invoke existential risk or superintelligence as a politician with the level of seriousness and volume Bernie has, you had better be strategically and intellectually serious in your policy. This is transparently unserious, dodging the actual important questions anyone who had thought about the issue would have grappled with. Existential risk is window dressing for people like Bernie, and many others. Safetyists are sweet nerds they will bring in to add a scientific gloss to what amounts to good old fashioned schemes of property seizure and redistribution.

[Dean W. Ball @deanwball]

Consider the political economy problems that might arise if (a) the U.S. government is financially dependent upon a thriving AI industry to finance ambitious new redistribution schemes and also (b) misaligned AI is an actual real-world problem but debated/very hard to detect. In other words, what if the “Yudkowsky school” is right and the only actual long-term solution to misalignment is some sort of an AI pause or ban, which USG structural dependence for new social welfare benefits would render politically impossible to implement.

If you are going to invoke existential risk or superintelligence as a politician with the level of seriousness and volume Bernie has, you had better be strategically and intellectually serious in your policy. This is transparently unserious, dodging the actual important questions anyone who had thought about the issue would have grappled with. Existential risk is window dressing for people like Bernie, and many others. Safetyists are sweet nerds they will bring in to add a scientific gloss to what amounts to good old fashioned schemes of property seizure and redistribution.

[Andy Masley @AndyMasley]

Animal welfare often gets talked about as if it's wishy washy, but saying about how I think pigs shouldn't be tortured always feels like I'm the one with my feet on the ground and it's other people building these mental castles in the sky about the imagined natural order

[Gideon Futerman @GFuterman]

In my view, this remains among the most under-discussed topic in AI policy.
No solution I have seen to this problem looks remotely like it gets close to addressing the actual problem.
I hope some really excellent talent applies!

[Luke Drago @luke_drago_]

➡️ More durable policy solutions to mass unemployment than UBI.

If we actually get total or near-total automation, we’ll need to rewrite the social contract.

But UBI doesn’t give you any leverage. It’s easy to take away.

We’re looking for policies that find innovative ways to keep humans in the economic loop.

[Luke Drago @luke_drago_]

➡️ More durable policy solutions to mass unemployment than UBI.

If we actually get total or near-total automation, we’ll need to rewrite the social contract.

But UBI doesn’t give you any leverage. It’s easy to take away.

We’re looking for policies that find innovative ways to keep humans in the economic loop.

[Herbie Bradley @herbiebradley]

@AdrienLE I have personally heard OpenAI, Anthropic, GDM, and xAI people talk about building god

[Gideon Futerman @GFuterman]

@gcolbourn Closer to the former, or other forms of action led by the US that slows ASI, combined with some sort of "AI societal uplift" that stops us on our current suicidal path

[Gideon Futerman @GFuterman]

Short timelines are those where the point of no return is before noon on 20/01/2029. Long timelines start after noon.

[Peter🌲Brannen @PeterBrannen1]

Geology is just all this. The New Jersey Palisades across from Manhattan are magmatic plumbing from volcanic eruptions that caused one of the biggest mass extinctions in Earth history. Central Park is seafloor from the dawn of the age of animal life.

[Shakeel @ShakeelHashim]

"insane overhang of capabilities" oh boy