Wow, what a year it has been. Things keep getting crazier. Thank you for taking this journey with me. I hope I have helped you keep pace, and that you have been able to discern for yourself the parts of this avalanche of words and events that were helpful. I hope to have helped things make somewhat more sense.
It's interesting, all of the areas you've chosen seem unbelievably entrenched. The type of situation where a small motivated group greatly benefits from the status quo of what you're trying to change. Although I don't know your funding situation, they probably have more money at stake financially than what you have raised. In that case, wouldn't it make sense for them to spend money to oppose your efforts to do things like alter or repeal the Jones Act up to the point where it is no longer profitable for them to do so? Right now, they enjoy the money directly, but if they could spend some of that money counter lobbying you and enjoy less but still positive money, it seems worth it to spend that on directly opposing you no? Is this a case where you think you can muster greater determination than them and win despite the money imbalance or do you think that politicians would prefer to agree with you? Again, I might be wrong and you might just have more money than what is gained by people profiting from the Jones Act.
The NEPA proposal is...going to be difficult. I gather the plan would be to replace not just NEPA but also NHPA and its associated tribal consultation requirements? And the Endangered Species Act?
One difference between the proposal and the status quo is that a panel with the power and obligation to decide on a project by majority vote will take minority interests into account systematically less than currently. For example, what is the spiritual cost of uranium mining on sites that are sacred to Indian tribes? Anywhere from zero to infinite depending on how you view it. Currently there are big incentives for government and developers to find some compromise with the affected tribe, under your proposal much less so.
Which means...all the minority groups that benefit from the status quo will be highly incentivized to fight this proposal.
I did worry for awhile that post-covid posts, there'd be some rough seas, but it turned out to be a good year indeed. Was pretty cool to see your OpenAI drama explainer linked by Matt Yglesias as a "better than what you'll find in the MSM summary".
Been meaning to ask for awhile, do you have any particular preference for funding allocation streams? The main reason I ended up becoming a paid subscriber in the first place is because for whatever reason I wasn't easily able to locate your Patreon at the time, and this was easier.
Good luck on the Jones Act mission. For the sake of friends, family, and corporate interests in my ambit that pay unreasonable rents because of it (Hawaii, sigh), I hope you're successful, or at least make an honourable attempt that inspires future efforts.
The first people to build AI sufficiently powerful to risk destroying the world are almost certainly going to be the well-funded corporations or governments, since they are the ones with the resources (both money for datacenters and motivated programmers) and therefore the only ones with models actually at the frontier of intelligence. (An actual ban on "open source frontier models" would therefore be acceptable because it bans nothing, but obviously that's not what you mean.)
So instead of attacking people who are open-sourcing models which we already know are not intelligent enough to destroy the world, why not focus your work instead on preventing organizations like OpenAI and Anthropic from building newer, more powerful, models in the first place, with every advance they make risking humanity's ruin?
From my perspective, once the model has been created, the horse is already out of the barn; researchers are going to test the capabilities of their model, so if it can destroy the world, it will. Going downstream of these frontier models to regulate their open-source pale imitations is just wasted effort that won't work at stopping the world from ending and hurts everybody along the way.
Thank you! I am so happy with everything you've done, are doing, and what I expect you to do in the future. I feel honored to know you, even as meager as that might be.
I'll join the chorus of "thank you"s. You have indeed helped all of this make more sense. And I'm glad it's not consuming so much of your time that you can't do other things too.
one thing I'd love to see from anyone pursuing policy changes is some kind of website policy "dashboard." Today's super short media cycle makes it hard to keep a topic on voters/politicians' minds, especially one that even in the best possible case isn't the #1 problem facing the country.
What I would love to see is a single page that 1) made the shortest possible argument for the change (links to more detailed arguments), 2) the good faith estimate costs of NOT doing it, amortized to today - "The Jones Act Costs Americans X million dollars a day", 3) a war-room score card with links to "territory won" - pundits, public figures, pols who have been pitched the case and come out in support and 4) "your donation dollars at work" showing what's been accomplished and what's next.
I might wake up in the morning and check the price of my company's stock. I'd love to be able to check the pulse of the stock "Will The Jones Act Be Repealed?" in a similar time frame.
Thank *you* for the best content out there on AI! Your summaries, your thoughts, all extremely valuable.
Congrats on a year!
It's interesting, all of the areas you've chosen seem unbelievably entrenched. The type of situation where a small motivated group greatly benefits from the status quo of what you're trying to change. Although I don't know your funding situation, they probably have more money at stake financially than what you have raised. In that case, wouldn't it make sense for them to spend money to oppose your efforts to do things like alter or repeal the Jones Act up to the point where it is no longer profitable for them to do so? Right now, they enjoy the money directly, but if they could spend some of that money counter lobbying you and enjoy less but still positive money, it seems worth it to spend that on directly opposing you no? Is this a case where you think you can muster greater determination than them and win despite the money imbalance or do you think that politicians would prefer to agree with you? Again, I might be wrong and you might just have more money than what is gained by people profiting from the Jones Act.
I like your choice of priorities.
re: jones act, via Tyler Cowen: https://www.nber.org/papers/w31938#fromrss
The NEPA proposal is...going to be difficult. I gather the plan would be to replace not just NEPA but also NHPA and its associated tribal consultation requirements? And the Endangered Species Act?
One difference between the proposal and the status quo is that a panel with the power and obligation to decide on a project by majority vote will take minority interests into account systematically less than currently. For example, what is the spiritual cost of uranium mining on sites that are sacred to Indian tribes? Anywhere from zero to infinite depending on how you view it. Currently there are big incentives for government and developers to find some compromise with the affected tribe, under your proposal much less so.
Which means...all the minority groups that benefit from the status quo will be highly incentivized to fight this proposal.
Why focus on the Jones Act and not the Foreign Dredge Act?
I did worry for awhile that post-covid posts, there'd be some rough seas, but it turned out to be a good year indeed. Was pretty cool to see your OpenAI drama explainer linked by Matt Yglesias as a "better than what you'll find in the MSM summary".
Been meaning to ask for awhile, do you have any particular preference for funding allocation streams? The main reason I ended up becoming a paid subscriber in the first place is because for whatever reason I wasn't easily able to locate your Patreon at the time, and this was easier.
Good luck on the Jones Act mission. For the sake of friends, family, and corporate interests in my ambit that pay unreasonable rents because of it (Hawaii, sigh), I hope you're successful, or at least make an honourable attempt that inspires future efforts.
I hope you start writing more about the Jones Act! I am eager to hear about what can be done effectively there.
The first people to build AI sufficiently powerful to risk destroying the world are almost certainly going to be the well-funded corporations or governments, since they are the ones with the resources (both money for datacenters and motivated programmers) and therefore the only ones with models actually at the frontier of intelligence. (An actual ban on "open source frontier models" would therefore be acceptable because it bans nothing, but obviously that's not what you mean.)
So instead of attacking people who are open-sourcing models which we already know are not intelligent enough to destroy the world, why not focus your work instead on preventing organizations like OpenAI and Anthropic from building newer, more powerful, models in the first place, with every advance they make risking humanity's ruin?
From my perspective, once the model has been created, the horse is already out of the barn; researchers are going to test the capabilities of their model, so if it can destroy the world, it will. Going downstream of these frontier models to regulate their open-source pale imitations is just wasted effort that won't work at stopping the world from ending and hurts everybody along the way.
Thank you! I am so happy with everything you've done, are doing, and what I expect you to do in the future. I feel honored to know you, even as meager as that might be.
I'll join the chorus of "thank you"s. You have indeed helped all of this make more sense. And I'm glad it's not consuming so much of your time that you can't do other things too.
one thing I'd love to see from anyone pursuing policy changes is some kind of website policy "dashboard." Today's super short media cycle makes it hard to keep a topic on voters/politicians' minds, especially one that even in the best possible case isn't the #1 problem facing the country.
What I would love to see is a single page that 1) made the shortest possible argument for the change (links to more detailed arguments), 2) the good faith estimate costs of NOT doing it, amortized to today - "The Jones Act Costs Americans X million dollars a day", 3) a war-room score card with links to "territory won" - pundits, public figures, pols who have been pitched the case and come out in support and 4) "your donation dollars at work" showing what's been accomplished and what's next.
I might wake up in the morning and check the price of my company's stock. I'd love to be able to check the pulse of the stock "Will The Jones Act Be Repealed?" in a similar time frame.