Why I'm now a decelerationist

For once, I see a decelerationist statement that I endorse. RSI is imminent, and the events of last week (Hugging Face, and also the proofs in longstanding maths problems implying impressive reasoning capabilities) suggest limits on how feasibly we can constrain future developments, and existential risks, if we don't cooperate now. The longer we delay this, the more likely that the measures to contain a crisis might be authoritarian, much in the same manner as neglecting pandemic preparedness then witnessing the Covid pandemic and its totalitarian lockdowns unfold and wreck misery on humanity.

The UK is terrible in most aspects of policymaking, but seems to me to have struck the right attitude in regulating AI (e.g. via the AISI framework). This is what many of the signatorys are calling for - beyond the usual doomer names, which inches me closer to to the decelerationist position. We will also need global cooperation, including and most importantly (especially given their dominance in open-source) with China.

We recognise a free and civilised society is sometimes best served by mandating dogs on a leash in certain places, in order to protect its inhabitants. Why should we treat AI any differently? Incredibly intelligent pets is roughly my model for thinking about AI, and sometimes it's best to keep our pets on a leash, for the good of ourselves, society, and our pets themselves.

I should add that the more expansive and heavier social costs were imposed not via the Covid pandemic itself, but by our extreme state surveillance and totalitarian control of human lives, to the grave misery of mankind, adopted as a response to this. The closest analogue to Covid totalitarian lockdowns today is the “pause AI” and “ban AI” crowd. We do not want to end up in such a situation whereby we start paying more attention to their destructive ideals.