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Reading this, Alex really put in a superhuman effort to avert Google's signing of the Pentagon contract, including so many attempts to engage with senior leadership and stakeholders at Google and he even presented a *meaningful* policy proposal that was both lauded by experts yet also simply ignored 🤯 I admire his stamina and persistence to do the right thing and follow this through in the interest of DeepMind. I cannot imagine how difficult this must have been So, continuing in my personal capacity, I shall say: a real shame that he was ignored and "left on read" by so many. (At best this is a collective failure of the organization.) Quite disappointing, because so many seem to care so deeply, and a different path should have been possible. Somehow the whole is not the sum of the parts here though According to Alex' writing Demis was supportive in sign-posting, but: > As I talked more with senior management, they kept arguing something like: “don’t worry. Leadership cares about these issues, too. They won’t sign an ‘all lawful use’ deal.” If this is true, it raises the question: where is the personal responsiblity if you pretend it won't happen and then it happens? "Whoops, too bad, this is the status quo now" ought not to cut it when we build technology that is "akin to the discovery of electricity or fire" all over I think this also provides a useful counter-factual for anyone claiming that one just needs to engage more with stakeholders and leadership and that people did not sufficiently pursue this. It seems Alex did. What difference it make? Look how much was tried and yet how impotent "doing the right thing" and "don't be evil" are when facing... what exactly? Why are GDM so powerless compared to Anthropic? Is it the tight integration with Google and how much attack surface Google offers to governmental pressure? Where does this impotence come from? The only conclusion I can come to is that UTAW's unionization effort is the best way to force Google & DeepMind to implement transparency and oversight in earnest and do the right the thing when leadership themselves seem not able to do so alone 🙏