Leopold Aschenbrenner: belief

Transcript context

…I’m coming closer to your position but… Let’s talk about the responsible scaling policies. I was told by people advancing this idea — because they know I’m a libertarian-type person and the way they approached me was like this — that the way to think about it was that it's fundamentally a way to protect market-based development of AGI. If you didn’t have this, there would be misuse and lead to nationalization. The RSPs are a way to ensure a market-based order with safeguards to prevent things from going off the rails. It seems like your story is self-consistent. I know this was never your position, so I’m not looping you into this. But it's almost like a motte-and-bailey argument. Here’s what I think about RSP-type stuff and current safety regulations. They’re important for helping us figure out what world we’re in and flashing the warning signs when we’re close. The story we’ve been telling is what I think the modal version of this decade is. There are many ways it could be wrong. We should talk about the data wall more. There’s a world where this stuff stagnates or we don’t have AGI. The RSPs preserve optionality. Let’s see how things go, but we need to be prepared if the red lights start flashing. If we get the automated AI researcher, then it’s crunch time. I can be on the same page with that and have a strong prior on pursuing a market-based way. Unless you’re right about what the intelligence explosion looks like, don’t move yet. But in that world where it really does seem like Alec Radford can be automated, and that's the only bottleneck to getting to ASI… Okay I think we can leave it at that. I’m somewhat on the way there.…

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