New US Senate Bill on X-Risk Mitigation [Linkpost]

Evan R. Murphy

New US Senate Bill on X-Risk Mitigation [Linkpost]

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New & upvoted

This bill does seem very important. It is hard to know what will help or hinder the political process, so I recommend that folks in the EA community don't try to do a public coordinated effort try to influence the content or outcome of this proposed bill - at least for now.

My understanding is that the people involved in drafting this bill are aware of the EA community, so they know they can reach out when and if they think that would be helpful.

Zach Stein-Perlman

I'm curious why some people strong-downvoted this and the LessWrong linkpost. Feel free to PM me if relevant.

Zach Stein-Perlman

The text is now public. It's short and easily skimmable. The bill wouldn't do much directly but creates a committee that would create a report on catastrophic risk and what to do about it. This is plausibly an important part of the possible futures where the US government responds well to risks from emerging technology.

Zach Stein-Perlman

We should reserve judgment until seeing what the bill really does, and whether some version of it will successfully become law, but this is exciting.

Guy Raveh

In a sense, yes; but even the fact that catastrophic (non-climate) risk mitigation is a politically viable topic for U.S. senators to talk about is a significant change, I think.

Daniel_Eth

It's interesting the term 'abused' was used with respect to AI. It makes me wonder if the authors have misalignment risks in mind at all or only misuse risks.

A separate press release says, "It is important that the federal government prepare for unlikely, yet catastrophic events like AI systems gone awry" (emphasis added), so my sense is they have misalignment risks in mind.

quinn

Seems like a win, curious to hear about involvement of people in our networks in making this happen.

Marcel2

Two US Senators have introduced a bipartisan bill specifically focused on catastrophic risk mitigation

Are you sure this specific bill was bipartisan / introduced by two senators, or might you be conflating it with the other bill mentioned at the end of the HSGAC post? I only saw Peters listed for the first bill…

[Update/Edit: I see now that the linked article does describe the bill as bipartisan, it's just strange that Portman wasn't mentioned in the June 30th article ]

Peter Wildeford

Per https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/minority-media/portman-peters-introduce-bipartisan-bill-to-ensure-federal-government-is-prepared-for-catastrophic-risks-to-national-security- Portman is also said to be on the bill, thus making it bipartisan, but we should note that Portman is retiring this term

Zach Stein-Perlman

The bill is sponsored by Republican Senator Rob Portman and cosponsored by Democratic Senator Gary Peters.

Eevee🔹

A link to the bill itself would be helpful, though I haven't been able to find one by googling.

Zach Stein-Perlman

Here it is, although the text isn't there yet (I expect it'll be added there soon but I'm not an expert on congress.gov).

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