Dean Ball: commitment

Transcript context

…Yeah. So first of all, one thing that, that people can do that's very actionable is I still think there's just a lot of wide open space in the, the general sort of point of view that I saw as a market opportunity when I started my Substack, was like, takes AGI seriously but also is, uh, interested, cares about classical liberalism and cares about foundational a- aspects of our republic. I still think there's just actually quite a lot of space open for that. So that's one intellectual contribution anyone can make. I think we need to develop the third-party ecosystem, whether we call it auditing or third-party valuation or independent verification, I don't care that much what we call it. But we need to build and make that ecosystem robust. We need to fund it well. We need people working in it. We need people that have lab-level quality working in those thing- lab, lab-level human capital working on those types of things. And those are org- these organizations are gonna have to be equipped to pay people. Not necessarily what a lab would pay you, but you're gonna have to be paid well. It can't be like you're making truly nonprofit salaries. Um, I think advocating for clear rules on the industry, for diffusion of the technology, uh, being wary of public, uh, of government sort of monopolization of frontier AI capabilities. That's gonna be a fight that has to be maintained, where like... And just to be totally candid, that's something I was doing, and I'll continue to do it. But my voice is gonna be, even though I do maintain my intellectual independence, there isn't, there's, the reality is that when you work at a lab, the nature of your communications is different, right? And so I'll continue to make that case, and I hope that people who know me know that it's really me talking and I'm not being a mouthpiece for OpenAI. But at the same time, we are gonna need people doing that. Um, and then in terms of how will I know that I've been successful, it's always hard to... I'm, I've never been, like, that much of a long range planner or goal setter. I just, the way I always think about this is I try to just do the next thing that feels right and true to me. Um, and that has always worked well. And I have the most information about what's close to me, and I have some broad goals, but those broad goals are relatively abstract. I guess what I would say is if in a few years frontier capabilities are still broadly diffused throughout the economy, we're starting to see what it looks like for new types-- We're starting to really see what the new types of organizations that AI enables. We're starting to see what that actually means concretely. We have considerably more clarity on what the relationship between the government and the labs is gonna look like. And we have a better sense of what the role of labs in s- in society is gonna be, and the labs themselves have played a role in articulating that positively. I don't think that will be... a look like. And we have a better sense of what the role of labs in s- in society is gonna be, and the labs themselves have played a role in articulating that positively. I don't think that will be... To be very clear, I am by no means the only person who will work on such things. I will play a small role in that. But I would consider it to be a job well done if I felt like I contributed positively to those things. One thing that has struck me about this conversation and your general profile is you've been pretty candid, and yet taking this role seems to imply that OpenAI leadership at least thinks that you continue to have a productive working relationship with the administration such that you can, you know, at least reasonably well, you know, engage them and, um, and not set off, you know, some sort of, uh- I don't know, immune system response, right, as somebody who-…

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