AI policy should focus on diffusion, not just model development

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 1:54:41

   future well i'm actually far more the reason that i told chris i want to be careful who we bring on the show is I don't actually want to be couched as the anti-regulation AI. I'm not an accelerationist by any stretch. Don't sound like one. I have tried to frame this discussion since the beginning as a diffusion problem. It's always been about the societal threshold, which you called out earlier. reach the point where the technological threshold is so impressive that the average person could get away using 4.0 and feel economically satisfied. The slowdown letter, which I had a feeling was coming, arrives at an amazing moment where safety has sort of reached a fever pitch and we can all genuinely take a sigh of relief at least for a moment, albeit you just said it, we shouldn't declare victory. To me, this is about rediscovering a shared vision. And I ask everyone when we start

2. 1:55:30

   an AI debate. I go, what do you want in this world? And I hate to be annoying, but could we at least set some boundary of what it is you're trying to achieve? Because how else are we going to debate technology? Like why debate technology unless we agree on what we're trying to achieve? And most people describe the world you want, one where we are more free and the world is less expensive. And if that's true, then we should actually spend time figuring out the policy measures that are required to allow people to be more free and to actually drive down the cost of goods and services because while we have made porn and gambling and addiction and violence and isolation infinitely inexpensive we have made housing health care and education prohibitively expensive for most of the developed world and that fucking sucks what the fuck are we doing

3. 1:56:15

   i mean it this tv screen used to be fifty thousand dollars now it's a hundred bucks you can get gas station sushi you can drive across los angeles for ten dollars in an autonomous vehicle, but a trip five blocks away in an ambulance might actually bankrupt you. The kids have figured it out. It's not a technological failure. It's a policy one. We stopped describing a better world where everyone's parents would live lives that they would pass on the next generation, a much better life. We stopped describing what it actually meant to, to pass on our luxuries as commodities. And we have broken a promise that we made many years ago in this country to build a more perfect world constantly. To me, this opportunity is not about debating the merits of AI. It's actually about reframing what it is this country should look like and what it is the world should feel like to the average person.

4. 1:57:08

   And you're making an interesting point, which is at some point, people are going to have to figure out what their purpose is. And I'm like, cool, let's get to that place by first driving down the cost of housing, healthcare, and education. And all of my policy would be spent on, if I were supreme ruler i'm ready to vote for you after that speech yeah policy policy that prohibits catastrophic downside necessary safety policy Policy that criminalizes preying on people. And setting predatory laws is going to be pretty tricky, but I think we all know where we could fall boundary. A 13-year-old should not be served an ad for porn or gambling, period. Senior citizens, if you attack a senior citizen using deepfake, prison for life, right? We set really punitive measures for preying on people because

5. 1:57:54

   that's the stuff that tears at the fabric of society. And then you mandate the laws, You mandate policy that requires that institutions diffuse this technology into them, including, but not limited to, universities allowing for everyone to have access to the curriculum, hospitals allowing people to basically get health care outside the box, and housing. We just need to build a shitload more of it.

6. 1:58:20

   We need to rezone cities. We need a Marshall Plan for housing. We should probably pass a non-resident tax. That's my most progressive policy measure or vacancy tax. But most of my policy measures would actually be focused on the ways that you diffuse the technology, not actually on how the technology needs to be made. Because if people can see that technology is actually good for them again, which it hasn't been for a little bit, then we can actually have a shared excitement. But right now, there's a malaise because people are like, no, this is just going to fuck me up worse than the last thing did. And I don't blame them.