EA - RP’s AI Governance & Strategy team - June 2023 interim overview by MichaelA

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: RP’s AI Governance & Strategy team - June 2023 interim overview, published by MichaelA on June 22, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Hi! I co-lead Rethink Priorities’ AI Governance & Strategy (AIGS) team. At the suggestion of Ben West, I’m providing an update on our team.Caveats:This was quickly written and omits most of the reasoning for our choices, because that was all I had time to write and that seemed better than not providing an update at all.This post may not reflect the views of all members of the team, and doesn’t represent RP as an organization.The areas we work in are evolving rapidly, so our strategy and projects are as well.Comments and DMs are welcome, though I can’t guarantee a rapid or detailed reply.SummaryThe AIGS team works to reduce catastrophic risks related to AI by conducting research and strengthening the field of AI governance. We aim to bridge the technical and policy worlds, and we now focus on short, rapid-turnaround outputs and briefings. [read more]Our four key workstreams are compute governance, China, lab governance, and US regulations. [read more]We list some of our ongoing or completed projects. [read more]Please feel free to reach out if you’d like to suggest a project; if you’re open to sharing feedback, expertise, or connections with us; or if you or someone you know might be interested in working with or funding us. [read more]I summarize a few lessons learned and recent updates. [read more]Who we areRethink Priorities’ AI Governance & Strategy team works to reduce catastrophic risks related to development & deployment of AI systems. We do this by producing research that grounds concrete recommendations in strategic considerations, and by strengthening coordination and talent pipelines across the AI governance field.We combine the intellectual independence and nonpartisanship of a think tank with the flexibility and responsiveness of a consultancy. Our work is funded solely by foundations and independent donors, giving us the freedom to pursue important questions without bias. We’re always on the lookout for unexplored high-value research questions–feel free to pitch us!We aim to bridge the technical and policy worlds, with expertise on foundation models and the hardware underpinning them.We focus on short, rapid-turnaround outputs and briefings, but also produce longer reports. Much of our work is nonpublic, but may be shareable on request.We have 11 staff, listed here. You can contact any of us at [email protected] four workstreamsWe recently narrowed down to four focus areas, each of which has a 1-3 person subteam working on it. Below we summarize these workstreams and link to docs that provide further information on each (e.g., about ongoing projects, public outputs, and stakeholders and paths to impact).Compute governance: This workstream will focus on establishing a firmer empirical and theoretical grounding for the fledgling field of compute governance, informing ongoing policy processes and debates, and developing more concrete technical and policy proposals. In particular, we will focus on understanding the impact of existing compute-related US export controls, and researching what changes to them may be feasible and beneficial.This workstream consists of Onni Aarne and Erich Grunewald, and we’re currently hiring a third member.China: This workstream’s mission is to improve decisions at the intersection of AI governance and China. We are interested in both China-West relations concerning AI, as well as AI developments within China. We are particularly focused on informing decision-makers who are concerned about catastrophic risks from AI.This workstream consists of Oliver Guest.Lab governance: This workstream identifies concrete measures frontier AI labs can adopt now and in ...