EA - #194 - Defensive acceleration and how to regulate AI when you fear government (Vitalik Buterin on the 80,000 Hours Podcast) by 80000 Hours

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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: #194 - Defensive acceleration and how to regulate AI when you fear government (Vitalik Buterin on the 80,000 Hours Podcast), published by 80000 Hours on August 1, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
We just published an interview: Vitalik Buterin on defensive acceleration and how to regulate AI when you fear government. Listen on Spotify, watch on Youtube or click through for other audio options, the transcript, and related links. Below are the episode summary and some key excerpts.
Episode summary
… if you're a power that is an island and that goes by sea, then you're more likely to do things like valuing freedom, being democratic, being pro-foreigner, being open-minded, being interested in trade. If you are on the Mongolian steppes, then your entire mindset is kill or be killed, conquer or be conquered … the breeding ground for basically everything that all of us consider to be dystopian governance.
If you want more utopian governance and less dystopian governance, then find ways to basically change the landscape, to try to make the world look more like mountains and rivers and less like the Mongolian steppes.
Vitalik Buterin
Can 'effective accelerationists' and AI 'doomers' agree on a common philosophy of technology? Common sense says no. But programmer and Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin showed otherwise with his essay "My techno-optimism," which both camps agreed was basically reasonable.
Seeing his social circle divided and fighting, Vitalik hoped to write a careful synthesis of the best ideas from both the optimists and the apprehensive.
Accelerationists are right: most technologies leave us better off, the human cost of delaying further advances can be dreadful, and centralising control in government hands often ends disastrously.
But the fearful are also right: some technologies are important exceptions, AGI has an unusually high chance of being one of those, and there are options to advance AI in safer directions.
The upshot? Defensive acceleration: humanity should run boldly but also intelligently into the future - speeding up technology to get its benefits, but preferentially developing 'defensive' technologies that lower systemic risks, permit safe decentralisation of power, and help both individuals and countries defend themselves against aggression and domination.
What sorts of things is he talking about? In the area of disease prevention it's most easy to see: disinfecting indoor air, rapid-turnaround vaccine platforms, and nasal spray vaccines that prevent disease transmission all make us safer against pandemics without generating any apparent new threats of their own. (And they might eliminate the common cold to boot!)
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Vitalik explains how he mentally breaks down defensive technologies into four broad categories:
Defence against big physical things like tanks.
Defence against small physical things like diseases.
Defence against unambiguously hostile information like fraud.
Defence against ambiguously hostile information like possible misinformation.
The philosophy of defensive acceleration has a strong basis in history. Mountain or island countries that are hard to invade, like Switzerland or Britain, tend to have more individual freedom and higher quality of life than the Mongolian steppes - where "your entire mindset is around kill or be killed, conquer or be conquered": a mindset Vitalik calls "the breeding ground for dystopian governance."
Defensive acceleration arguably goes back to ancient China, where the Mohists focused ...