Hi everyone.
There's an election next month in the UK and I'm conflicted on who to vote for. Usually I vote Green for their position on factory farming, but this time I'm contemplating voting Conservative, purely because Sunak seems to take AI risk seriously.
The current Conservative government organised an AI safety summit last year, and has directed funds towards safety research. Sunak also has an interview on Youtube that I thought showed an impressive understanding of AI research for a political leader. A lot of commentators say the current UK government is the world leader on AI regulation/safety and I'm not confident the opposition party (Labour) would continue that track record.
I don't have strong opinions on how important AI safety is, but people I respect, particularly Scott Alexander, seem to think it's the most important thing currently happening and Deep Mind is located in London, so the UK's AI policies will have non-zero impact on alignment.
Otherwise, there's nothing I find appealing about the Conservatives, and definitely wouldn't say they're aligned with EA values.
I'm interested in if this is a major consideration for any other EAs voting in the UK, and whether anyone thinks it would be myopic to let AI safety override all other issues in the election.
Here is the closest thing I could find to Labour's AI policy: Friend or foe: Labour’s looming battle on AI (Politico). It seems as if an interest group, funded by Larry Ellison, is largely influencing this pro-AI position?
As such, I wonder if this position would be easily swayable in the future—and equally, if the current Conservative position might also be.
I guess it's worth waiting to see what each party says in its manifesto.
But unless the polls dramatically tighten, it doesn't seem particularly valuable to spend time weighing up which party to vote for at a national level because it's highly likely (>90%) that Labour will win.
What might be valuable is considering the top couple of candidates in your local constituency (once candidates are confirmed) and going along to a hustings event to directly ask them for their views. Some constituencies will be determined by a relatively small number of votes - potentially a few hundred or even a few tens. But even if it's a relatively safe seat, this could help nudge the winning candidate to support better safety/regulation.
I think you could answer this question by researching what impact the current policies have already had on DeepMind, and what future policies the Sunak government has committed to. By my understanding, not much? If so, you'd have to come up with a good reason for why they haven't achieved much.