yanni kyriacos
Bio
Creating superintelligent artificial agents without a worldwide referendum is ethically unjustifiable. Until a consensus is reached on whether to bring into existence such technology, a global moratorium is required (n.b. we already have AGI).
Posts 26
Comments369
AI Safety Monthly Meetup - Brief Impact Analysis
For the past 8 months, we've (AIS ANZ) been running consistent community meetups across 5 cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Wellington and Canberra). Each meetup averages about 10 attendees with about 50% new participant rate, driven primarily through LinkedIn and email outreach. I estimate we're driving unique AI Safety related connections for around $6.
Volunteer Meetup Coordinators organise the bookings, pay for the Food & Beverage (I reimburse them after the fact) and greet attendees. This initiative would literally be impossible without them.
Key Metrics:
- Total Unique New Members: 200
- 5 cities × 5 new people per month × 8 months
- Consistent 50% new attendance rate maintained
- Network Growth: 600 new connections
- Each new member makes 3 new connections
- Only counting initial meetup connections, actual number likely higher
- Cost Analysis:
- Events: $3,000 (40 meetups × $75 Food & Beverage per meetup)
- Marketing: $600
- Total Cost: $3,600
- Cost Efficiency: $6 per new connection ($3,600/600)
ROI: We're creating unique AI Safety related connections at $6 per connection, with additional network effects as members continue to attend and connect beyond their initial meetup.
I didn't want to read all of @LintzA's post on the "The Game Board has been Flipped" and all 43+ comments, so I copy/pasted the entire webpage into Claude with the following prompt: "Please give me a summary of the authors argument (dot points, explained simply) and then give me a summary of the kinds of support and push back they got (dot points, explained simply, thematised, giving me a sense of the concentration/popularity of themes in the push back)"
Below is the result (the Forum team might want to consider how posts with large numbers of comments can be read quickly):
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Main Arguments:
- Recent developments require a complete rethink of AI safety strategy, particularly:
- AI timelines are getting much shorter (leaders like Sam Altman expecting AGI within 3 years)
- Trump's likely presidency changes the political landscape for regulation
- New technical developments (like Deepseek and inference scaling) mean capabilities are advancing faster than expected
- China is closer to US capabilities than previously thought
- AI labs are becoming more secretive about their work
- Key implications according to the author:
- Safety strategies that take several years may be too slow to matter
- Need to completely rethink how to communicate AI risk to appeal to conservative audiences
- Working inside AI labs may be more important as capabilities become more hidden
- The US has less of an advantage over China than previously thought
- International agreements may be more important than previously believed
Common Themes in Response (ordered by apparent prominence in comments):
Strong Agreement/Supporting Points:
- Many commenters appreciated the comprehensive overview of recent developments
- Several agreed with the need to rethink strategies given shorter timelines
Major Points of Disagreement:
- Working at AI Labs
- Multiple prominent commenters (including Buck and Holly Elmore) pushed back strongly against the author's suggestion that working at AI labs is increasingly important
- They argued that lab workers have limited influence on safety and risk being "captured" by lab interests
- Some suggested external pressure might be more effective
- Strategy and Movement Focus:
- Several commenters argued for more emphasis on trying to pause AI development
- Some questioned whether shifting focus away from EU/UK engagement was wise
- Discussion about whether mass movement building should be prioritized
Technical/Factual Corrections:
- Some corrections on specific claims about timeline estimates
- Discussion about terminology (e.g., "open source" vs "open weights")
Other Notable Points:
- Questions about the US vs China framing
- Debate about whether compute advantages still matter given recent developments
- Discussion about the value of different political strategies (bipartisan vs partisan approaches)
Overall Tone of Reception: The piece appears to have been well-received as a useful overview of recent developments, but with significant pushback on specific strategic recommendations, particularly around working at AI labs and political strategy.
One axis where Capabilities and Safety people pull apart the most, with high consequences is on "asking for forgiveness instead of permission."
1) Safety people need to get out there and start making stuff without their high prestige ally nodding first
2) Capabilities people need to consider more seriously that they're building something many people simply do not want
Larry Ellison, who will invest tens of billions in Stargate said uberveillance via AGI will be great because then police and the populace would always have to be on their best behaviour. It is best to assume the people pushing 8 billion of us into the singularity have psychopathy (or similar disorders). This matters because we need to know who we're going up against: there is no rationalising with these people. They aren't counting the QALYs!
Footage of Larry’s point of view starts around 12.00 on Matt Wolf’s video
Mange is spreading in wombats in Australia. I saw a severely debilitated (dying) wombat on my parents farm. WIRES animal rescue couldn't help, so I was left wondering whether to kill it or not. I didn't because I worried about making the suffering worse. Kind of wish I owned a gun in that moment.