AF - Priorities for the UK Foundation Models Taskforce by Andrea Miotti

<a href="https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/YAgQysWqoBJ7eA7Np/priorities-for-the-uk-foundation-models-taskforce">Link to original article</a><br/><br/>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: Priorities for the UK Foundation Models Taskforce, published by Andrea Miotti on July 21, 2023 on The AI Alignment Forum. The UK government recently established the Foundation Models Taskforce, focused on AI safety, modelled on the Vaccine Taskforce, and backed by £100M in funding. Founder, investor and AI expert Ian Hogarth leads the new organization. The establishment of the Taskforce shows the UK's intention to be a leading player in the greatest governance challenge of our times: keeping humanity in control of a future with increasingly powerful AIs. This is no small feat, and will require very ambitious policies that anticipate the rapid developments in the AI field, rather than just reacting to them. Here are some recommendations on what the Taskforce should do. The recommendations fall into three categories: Communication and Education about AI risk, International Coordination, and Regulation and Monitoring. Communication and Education about AI Risk The Taskforce is uniquely positioned to educate and communicate about AI development and risks. Here is how it could do it: Private education The Taskforce should organize private education sessions for UK Members of Parliament, Lords, and high-ranking civil servants, in the form of presentations, workshops, and closed-door Q&As with Taskforce experts. These would help bridge the information gap between policymakers and the fast-moving AI field. A new platform: ai.gov.uk The Taskforce should take a proactive role in disseminating knowledge about AI progress, the state of the AI field, and the Taskforce's own actions: The Taskforce should publish bi-weekly or monthly Bulletins and Reports on AI on an official government website. The Taskforce can start doing this right away by publishing its bi-weekly or monthly bulletins and reports on the state of AI progress and AI risk on the UK government's research and statistics portal. The Taskforce should set up ai.gov.uk, an online platform modeled after the UK's COVID-19 dashboard. The platform's main page should be a dashboard showing key information about AI progress and Taskforce progress in achieving its goals, that gets updated regularly. ai.gov.uk should have a progress bar trending towards 100% for all of the Task Force's key objectives. ai.gov.uk should also include a "Safety Plans of AI Companies" monthly report, with key insights visualized on the dashboard. The Taskforce should send an official questionnaire to each frontier AI company to compile this report. This questionnaire should contain questions about companies' estimated risk of human extinction caused by the development of their AIs, their timelines until the existence of powerful and autonomous AI systems, and their safety plans regarding development and deployment of frontier AI models. There is no need to make the questionnaire mandatory. For companies that don't respond or respond only to some questions, the relevant information on the dashboard should be left blank, or filled in with a "best guess" or "most relevant public information" curated by Taskforce experts. Public-facing communications Taskforce members should utilize press conferences, official posts on the Taskforce's website, and editorials in addition to ai.gov.uk to educate the public about AI development and risks. Key topics to cover in these public-facing communications include: Frontier AI development is focused on developing autonomous, superhuman, general agents, not just towards better chatbots or the automation of individual tasks. These are and will increasingly be AIs capable of making their own plans and taking action in the real world. No one fully understands how these systems function, their capabilities or limits, and how to control or restrict them. All of these remain unsolved technical challenges. Consensus on the so...

First published

07/21/2023

Genres:

education

Listen to this episode

0:00 / 0:00

Summary

Link to original articleWelcome 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: Priorities for the UK Foundation Models Taskforce, published by Andrea Miotti on July 21, 2023 on The AI Alignment Forum. The UK government recently established the Foundation Models Taskforce, focused on AI safety, modelled on the Vaccine Taskforce, and backed by £100M in funding. Founder, investor and AI expert Ian Hogarth leads the new organization. The establishment of the Taskforce shows the UK's intention to be a leading player in the greatest governance challenge of our times: keeping humanity in control of a future with increasingly powerful AIs. This is no small feat, and will require very ambitious policies that anticipate the rapid developments in the AI field, rather than just reacting to them. Here are some recommendations on what the Taskforce should do. The recommendations fall into three categories: Communication and Education about AI risk, International Coordination, and Regulation and Monitoring. Communication and Education about AI Risk The Taskforce is uniquely positioned to educate and communicate about AI development and risks. Here is how it could do it: Private education The Taskforce should organize private education sessions for UK Members of Parliament, Lords, and high-ranking civil servants, in the form of presentations, workshops, and closed-door Q&As with Taskforce experts. These would help bridge the information gap between policymakers and the fast-moving AI field. A new platform: ai.gov.uk The Taskforce should take a proactive role in disseminating knowledge about AI progress, the state of the AI field, and the Taskforce's own actions: The Taskforce should publish bi-weekly or monthly Bulletins and Reports on AI on an official government website. The Taskforce can start doing this right away by publishing its bi-weekly or monthly bulletins and reports on the state of AI progress and AI risk on the UK government's research and statistics portal. The Taskforce should set up ai.gov.uk, an online platform modeled after the UK's COVID-19 dashboard. The platform's main page should be a dashboard showing key information about AI progress and Taskforce progress in achieving its goals, that gets updated regularly. ai.gov.uk should have a progress bar trending towards 100% for all of the Task Force's key objectives. ai.gov.uk should also include a "Safety Plans of AI Companies" monthly report, with key insights visualized on the dashboard. The Taskforce should send an official questionnaire to each frontier AI company to compile this report. This questionnaire should contain questions about companies' estimated risk of human extinction caused by the development of their AIs, their timelines until the existence of powerful and autonomous AI systems, and their safety plans regarding development and deployment of frontier AI models. There is no need to make the questionnaire mandatory. For companies that don't respond or respond only to some questions, the relevant information on the dashboard should be left blank, or filled in with a "best guess" or "most relevant public information" curated by Taskforce experts. Public-facing communications Taskforce members should utilize press conferences, official posts on the Taskforce's website, and editorials in addition to ai.gov.uk to educate the public about AI development and risks. Key topics to cover in these public-facing communications include: Frontier AI development is focused on developing autonomous, superhuman, general agents, not just towards better chatbots or the automation of individual tasks. These are and will increasingly be AIs capable of making their own plans and taking action in the real world. No one fully understands how these systems function, their capabilities or limits, and how to control or restrict them. All of these remain unsolved technical challenges. Consensus on the so...

Duration

9 minutes

Parent Podcast

The Nonlinear Library: Alignment Forum Daily

View Podcast

Share this episode

Similar Episodes

AMA: Paul Christiano, alignment researcher by Paul Christiano

Release Date: 12/06/2021

Description: 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: AMA: Paul Christiano, alignment researcher, published by Paul Christiano on the AI Alignment Forum. I'll be running an Ask Me Anything on this post from Friday (April 30) to Saturday (May 1). If you want to ask something just post a top-level comment; I'll spend at least a day answering questions. You can find some background about me here. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Explicit: No

Details

What is the alternative to intent alignment called? Q by Richard Ngo

Release Date: 11/17/2021

Description: 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: What is the alternative to intent alignment called? Q, published by Richard Ngo on the AI Alignment Forum. Paul defines intent alignment of an AI A to a human H as the criterion that A is trying to do what H wants it to do. What term do people use for the definition of alignment in which A is trying to achieve H's goals (whether or not H intends for A to achieve H's goals)? Secondly, this seems to basically map on to the distinction between an aligned genie and an aligned sovereign. Is this a fair characterisation? (Intent alignment definition from) Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Explicit: No

Details

AI alignment landscape by Paul Christiano

Release Date: 11/19/2021

Description: 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: AI alignment landscape, published byPaul Christiano on the AI Alignment Forum. Here (link) is a talk I gave at EA Global 2019, where I describe how intent alignment fits into the broader landscape of “making AI go well,” and how my work fits into intent alignment. This is particularly helpful if you want to understand what I’m doing, but may also be useful more broadly. I often find myself wishing people were clearer about some of these distinctions. Here is the main overview slide from the talk: The highlighted boxes are where I spend most of my time. Here are the full slides from the talk. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Explicit: No

Details

Would an option to publish to AF users only be a useful feature?Q by Richard Ngo

Release Date: 11/17/2021

Description: 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: Would an option to publish to AF users only be a useful feature?Q , published by Richard Ngo on the AI Alignment Forum. Right now there are quite a few private safety docs floating around. There's evidently demand for a privacy setting lower than "only people I personally approve", but higher than "anyone on the internet gets to see it". But this means that safety researchers might not see relevant arguments and information. And as the field grows, passing on access to such documents on a personal basis will become even less efficient. My guess is that in most cases, the authors of these documents don't have a problem with other safety researchers seeing them, as long as everyone agrees not to distribute them more widely. One solution could be to have a checkbox for new posts which makes them only visible to verified Alignment Forum users. Would people use this? Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Explicit: No

Details