Description du poste
After a couple of years working in data and tech at GiveDirectly, I left to work in politics, campaigning for candidates at the state, local, and federal levels. I most recently managed Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s general election campaign, but earlier this year, recognizing the urgency of the AI moment, I began as a senior advisor at Guardrails Alliance. In my new role, I believe the analysis and tactics we’ve long used and studied on the populist left can help us win the fight for AI safety and shared benefits.
The fight for AI regulation is fundamentally the same type of fight against corporate power that the populist left and labor have led throughout history. The message and tactics that win that fight are both effective and incredibly popular, and embracing them will help us put the American people in control of AI today and permanently in control of their futures. Here– in what I am told is likely the shortest LessWrong post of all time– I'll explain what the AI safety movement can learn from the populist left as it attempts to raise the salience of its message, build political power, and ultimately pass transformational legislation.
First, we need to be clear about the nature of the fight: who our opponents are and what they are trying to win. At its core, the fight for AI safety is a campaign to put significant checks on corporate power, which will ultimately curtail these companies’ profits, and limit their ability to consolidate influence and build monopolies. While some draw the distinction between “bad AI” (OpenAI) and “good AI” (Anthropic), both companies are rapidly developing products that put humanity at risk in pursuit of making more money than anyone in the history of the world, and there is reasonable evidence that Anthropic’s pitch to be seen as “good AI” is simply a hollow branding exercise designed to taint its competition (which itself originally claimed to be “good AI”!). The milquetoast bill Anthropic circulated earlier this year makes it clear