I am the grant proposer, and I wanted to briefly respond to two of your concerns. First, it's true that most HLS grads make more than $200/hr. However, most HLS grads also sell out to the highest corporate bidder. I've been trying to do good all through my career, so even my 'private' clients are typically individual homeowners, workers, tenants, patients, and so on, rather than Amazon or Wal-Mart.

Second, of course I'm aware that a typical lobbying campaign involves Congressional allies, major interest groups, and other heavy hitters -- especially if you're hearing about the lobbying campaign in the news. However, many smaller regulations are passed all the time, very quietly, as part of the government's routine business of slowly making marginal improvements to its own policies. I believe the regulations I'm working on are small enough that they could be passed with only modest support from the EA community. I will organize people to write positive comments during the notice and comment period, look for people who can introduce me to key policymakers, and get as much done as I can.

@JasonGreenLowe I very much appreciate your direct reply to my comment about the suspiciously low rate. Your clients are lucky to be getting $1000/hr talent at such a significant discount.

On your second point I agree with you that such regulations do get passed all the time, but I do not necessarily agree that simply getting any particular “regulation” through the system is in and of itself a good KPI. I think it would be helpful to know more about your general philosophy on the optimal ways to approach regulation of AI systems, perhaps even focus on a specific use case or user group (e.g. medical devices & FDA). This will make it easier to set goals that are both attainable and laudable.

Taking a scatter shot approach of simply ‘organizing people to work toward a thing that’s good’ is hard for someone like me, who works in this field, to get excited about.

Please note that this account bought some shares in this market in error. Once this error was noticed, we then sold them all. This account has a policy of not betting in its own markets.

You know this is total BS because it says "JD from Harvard" but then says "my usual rate for private sector clients is $200/hour"! LMAO! A real JD from Harvard gets you $200/hr for pro bono cases, $600/hr if you are a terrible lawyer, $1000/hr if you are average among your fellow alum.

As Gigacasting says, cutting the rate in half because it's non-profit work, then adding back 30% for taxes, is slight of hand and a bad indicator.

Much more importantly, I am deeply unconvinced that the proposed method will work: going to regulators as a private citizen concerned about an issue is not a strategy that successful people pursue. The applicant seems well-meaning and harmless, but to be a lawyer who is missing some important components of how regulations are crafted in the real world. To pick one example, at no point does the proposer talk about meeting with existing tech lobbying groups to figure out what sort of regulations would be acceptable to them while accomplishing their goals.

The positive case for funding this, in my view, is that generating draft legislation is actually pretty valuable, and identifying what legal mechanisms are in place and who exercises them under what conditions will be necessary. If we want CFIUS to put limitations on AI labs, is that viable? What could that accomplish? Those sorts of detail questions will be really useful for AI policymakers.

But "I will draft a good idea and will go to regulators about it" is not the sort of plan made by people who manage to make regulatory/legal changes. Finding congressional champions, getting support / non-opposition from tech industry lobbying groups (if you are fine waiting for a scandal, anti-tech groups can also work, but if you want to do it today you can't have tech lobbyists fighting you), those are necessary and don't appear at all in this proposal.

If funded, I expect that the proposed regulations either will not be implemented, or will be so watered-down as to be meaningless. Making that concrete, a survey of AI practitioners at top labs will not find that they care about the regulations, two years after they're implemented, 60% probability, or think that they contribute to AI safety after selecting for people who care about AI safety, 85% probability.

That said, generating the draft regulations and identifying the relevant mechanisms could be really useful, so I would recommend rejecting at this stage and asking for a resubmission. I've reached out to the author to meet up at EAG DC to discuss potential plans for improvements.

@Celer Did anything come out of that meeting?

I'm generally pessimistic for regulatory-based approaches to AGI notkillingeveryone, but this is relatively cheap to try, and I think would give good information in terms of how receptive regulators were and what was achievable, given a qualified applicant who can make as good a shot at it as is viable to do.

I think $300k to maybe get a foot in the door for future regulations which we think might at least slow things down a little later, or to show that this is not a good avenue and allow future safety efforts to be focused on more promising venues, probably pays off about as well as anything else in alignment work right now.

A thing that would swing me to NO more substantially would be if anyone was already working on this- if so value of information might be signfiicantly reduced.

@jbeshir Withdraw this comment in light of Celer's above, which is considerably better informed!

I'm generally pretty skeptical of this sort of stuff, but the applicant seems fairly qualified and to have consulted with a bunch of AIS researchers and policymakers. I'd be curious how many of these people they consulted with are actually excited about the applicant's plan though

 I believe it is reasonable to get at least 3 new regulations published in the Federal Register within a year after the project receives funding

Double the funding and make it conditional on success.

@NuñoSempere First, this is not a measure of success toward achieving useful regulation of AI. Also, this application amounts to 'Harvard law school grad convinces friend(s) who work(s) on the Hill to slip specific language to help them get paid for being well connected'. I am working on an extended response against this application.

“My usual hourly rate for private sector clients is $200/hour. I am willing to cut that in half in order to make good use of your fund's resources, because I believe in the cause. Assuming a 30% allowance for taxes, a buffer of 10% for unanticipated expenses, and an allowance”

🤔