Thank you! This is really helpful in clarifying the governance 'pipeline' and thinking about where my own works fits into this. This comment is on what others activities and actors could be included, specially journalists, media organisations and other 'cultural' influencers and activities. This comment is based on skimming the piece and on my own intuitions rather than digging too deeply into the evidence base around the role of media and cultural institutions in shaping policy and governance, so might have already considered them and decided there was in... (read more)
Thanks Elliot - these are good points. In addition to the popular culture-shaping activities (by media actors and others) that you mention (i), I would add
ii) education activities (forming the future AI developers and other relevant individuals - either through the education system or extra-curricular),
iii) profession-shaping activities (carried out e.g. a professional association of AI developers), and
iv) ideology-shaping activities (e.g. by religious actors).
We decided against including them as I had not witnessed significant influence from these actors on AI governance and therefore didn't feel confident about explaining this influence (yes, to a certain extent the Cambridge Analytica scandal or France Haugen leaks have been talked about a lot, but they only shifted the mindset of relevant actors on AI because advocates/lobbyists/thinktanks/advisors kept using these scandals as excuse for altering a policy stance. For many policymakers, the scandal was resumed as "facebook = bad company", not "bad AI".) One additional source of complexity is that, given their indirect impact, it is difficult to ensure they result in a net-positive impact. For example, Unsafe at Any Speed triggered the American consumer movement but also triggered the Powell Memorandum which arguably resulted in a capture of US policymaking by for-profit interests even to date. However, uncertainty doesn't mean these activities shouldn't be considered for impact - especially since they are quite versatile (It's plausible a skilled journalist could write impactful pieces about AI, pandemics, animal welfare, effective philanthopy and global development throughout her.his career)
Likewise, we faced the question of whether to include EA community-building and grant-making activities as a meta activities influencing AI governance, but that again stretched from "traditional" non-EA definitions of AI governance.
Thank you! This is really helpful in clarifying the governance 'pipeline' and thinking about where my own works fits into this. This comment is on what others activities and actors could be included, specially journalists, media organisations and other 'cultural' influencers and activities. This comment is based on skimming the piece and on my own intuitions rather than digging too deeply into the evidence base around the role of media and cultural institutions in shaping policy and governance, so might have already considered them and decided there was in... (read more)