A personal take on longtermist AI governance

Abstract

Several months ago, I summarized Open Philanthropy’s work on AI governance (which I lead) for a general audience here. In this post, I elaborate my thinking on AI governance in more detail for people who are familiar with effective altruism, longtermism, existential risk, and related topics. Without that context, much of what I say below may be hard to understand, and easy to misunderstand. These are my personal views, and don’t necessarily reflect Open Phil’s views, or the views of other individuals at Open Phil. In this post, I * briefly recap the key points of my previous post, * explain what I see as the key bottlenecks in the space, and * share my current opinions about how people sympathetic to longtermism and/or AI existential risk mitigation can best contribute today.