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This is a fully general counterargument against any regulation. Even your proposed regime rounds off to "do everything I say the way I say it and it has to be enforced by someone who thinks like me."
Their stated beliefs on AI dangers, which philosophically long predate Anthropic as a going concern, are entirely consistent with the proposed regime. In fact, it would be contradictory for them to believe in AI risks and argue for laissez-faire. Perhaps you disagree on the risks, but that is the root of the disagreement, not the regulatory framework.
Well, that's the rub, isn't it? I think that their stated beliefs on AI dangers, which long predate Anthropic as a going concern (and which like all delusions survived the future being completely different from all claims made for the last 15 years), are delusions of grandeur for the Silicon Valley class the way that the Cult of Reason justified taking over France and cutting off the heads off anyone who expressed doubt. The sincerity of their beliefs, which I mostly don't doubt, can't be separated from the fact that these beliefs are grossly self-aggrandising and justify the infinite self-serving accumulation of power.
My point is that a power grab is still a power grab. Dressing it up in impassioned and sincere rhetoric about how everyone will die if they don't get power doesn't make it any less of a power grab.
(My proposed regime at least rounds off to opening the floor to everyone.)
It obviously can't be the case that "this increases the power of AI companies that take safety seriously" is an argument against a regulatory regime that takes AI safety seriously. The argument must actually be that AI safety is not a concern, not that even if it is a concern we must still be suicidally unconcerned.
Since the ask is massive, the argument must convince me and others that AI safety is a concern. I've heard that argument, as have many, and I don't believe it. The fact that it seems obviously motivated is a part of why I don't believe it though there are many others.
If somebody tells you out of the blue that you are going to die of cancer unless you take a 50g zinc tablet every day, it is obviously relevant if he is a travelling zinc salesman! Not to the extent of completely shutting him down, necessarily, one might hear him out; a world where one is barred from raising safety concerns if one sells safety products is obviously not very sensible. Nevertheless, it remains the case that our zinc salesman has a conflict of interest large enough to drive a bus through and that is going to be a factor in whether we believe his predictions and how much proof we demand of his assertions.
And, as I say, I do not like the way that AI safety groups operate, even the ones who don't profit directly off the regulation and the scaremongering. Take for example Scott Alexander leaving his name off the new AI 2040 document despite having done a serious amount of writing for it, so that he can "discuss it without PR issues". That is, he has hidden his involvement to push his political manifesto whilst pretending to be an interested bystander. Every aspect of it looks like a cult, and the AI safety movement has made no secret that their intended solution to 'making AI not kill us all' has no democratic element but is to be driven entirely by lobbying and backroom wrangling and military force. Which isn't surprising considering that Scott's latest post on AI regulation has gone down like a sack of cold sick even in an EA-friendly place.
They are, in short, totally uninterested in whether the rest of the world agrees with their analysis, and they do not intend to permit dissent. Their intended solution is to get the two largest countries in the world to get together and fuck up anyone who disagrees with them in ways that would horrify them for literally any other problem except their super-special Millenarian one.
If somebody believed that there would be terrible consequences for the human race unless everyone took a 50g zinc tablet, could they be anything but a traveling zinc salesman, or a fellow, uh, traveler?
Your opinion is that we can't trust people concerned about AI safety about AI safety because it may increase their status. Okay, who can we trust about AI safety? People unconcerned about AI safety? Seems like epistemic closure to me.
I can't honestly believe you think his involvement is "hidden" when he discloses it in the opening section of his first post on the topic.
This is already basically how nuclear non-proliferation works, as we've seen in Iran. Again, you can argue about if AI is as dangerous as nuclear weapons, but if you assume arguendo it is, then this is an obviously similar regulatory regime that basically nobody opposes.
Your argument basically boils down to:
If AI really is dangerous, we would need to take drastic action to avoid bad outcomes.
Drastic action would be bad.
Therefore, AI can't be dangerous.
Or perhaps:
The people who think AI is dangerous are suggesting drastic action.
Therefore, AI can't be dangerous.
It is in fact, emphatically not how nuclear non-proliferation works - see my post here (and the whole comment chain if you like, which is discussing the same arguments as this comment chain).
The fundamental difference is that the NLPT is about stopping weak states from getting nukes (which is possible because it is in the interest of great powers, who already got their nukes), while AI 2040 / total de-nuclearization requires that the great powers hold hands and sing kumbaya against each of their own interests.
The equivalent to AI 2040 but for nukes would be, because you're afraid of Putin deciding Après moi, le déluge and first-striking DC, to first strike Moscow pre-emptively to try and de-nuclearize him in advance. Obviously you can see the problems with this.
My argument basically boils down to:
If AI really is dangerous, we would need to take drastic action to avoid bad outcomes.
Drastic action would be bad.
Therefore, we shouldn't get Pascal's Mugged into taking drastic action.
At this point there are only two countries with AI models near the frontier. If these countries make a deal that they will not advance their models past a certain capability level and will prevent other powers from doing so, this is much closer to the NLPT than disarmament. Most obviously, it does not entail any reduction in AI capabilities, where disarmament entails a reduction in nuclear capabilities.
Right. The US and China get a photo op in Brussels shaking hands, while they make a deal that they won't advance their models.
Then they both take the plane back home and keep advancing their models. Whatcha gonna do?
AI 2040 is much closer to total disarmament than it is the NLPT, because the NLPT is about punching down (it is plainly true that the US/China could stop any non-nuclear power from advancing models) while AI 2040 / total disarmament is about restraining great powers from pursuing their interests, which is of course completely impossible unless you pull the nuclear card. The NLPT was completely useless at restraining the P5 from having as many nukes as they liked, after all, which is who we're actually worried will create models that are too powerful.
The other big difference between nukes and compute is that nukes are binary: unless you fire a nuke it's useless, and once you have "glass the world" levels of capabilities there aren't many benefits to having more nukes, whereas with compute it's just straightforwardly useful to have more, unrestricted compute. This is why disarmament kind of worked between the US and Russia (but of course, never under the number of warheads needed to glass the world) and is a complete non-starter with compute.
I am not interested in debating Plan A, but the implication that there is no proposal to audit compliance is false. This is a pretty low effort response.
This just sounds like word games. Disarmament isn't when you stop building more nukes or improving existing nukes. Do I need to cite the dictionary?
You've set up an argument where actual nuclear disarmament must have been in the interests of the nuclear powers since it happened. Okay, well then if this happens then it's also in the interests of the great powers.
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