====== Affordances for AI labs ======

//Published 25 January 2023//

This is a list of actions AI labs could take that may be strategically relevant (or consequences or characteristics of possible actions).

===== List =====

  * Deploy an AI system
  * Pursue AI capabilities
      * Pursue risky (and more or less alignable systems) systems
      * Pursue systems that enable risky (and more or less alignable) systems
      * Pursue weak AI that's mostly orthogonal to progress in risky stuff for a specific (strategically significant) task or goal
          * This could enable or abate catastrophic risks besides unaligned AI
  * Do alignment (and related) research (or: decrease the [[https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/63stBTw3WAW6k45dY/paul-christiano-current-work-in-ai-alignment|alignment tax]] by doing technical research)
      * Including interpretability and work on solving or avoiding alignment-adjacent problems like [[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/brXr7PJ2W4Na2EW2q/the-commitment-races-problem|decision theory and strategic interaction]] and maybe [[http://acritch.com/arches/|delegation involving multiple humans or multiple AI systems]]
  * Advance global capabilities
      * Publish capabilities research
      * Cause investment or spending in big AI projects to increase
  * Advance alignment (or: decrease the alignment tax) in ways other than doing technical research
      * Support and coordinate with external alignment researchers
  * Attempt to align a particular system (or: try to pay the alignment tax)
  * Interact with other labs
      * Coordinate with other labs (notably including coordinating to avoid risky systems)
          * Make themselves transparent to each other
          * Make themselves transparent to an external auditor
          * Merge
          * Effectively commit to share upsides
          * Effectively commit to [[https://openai.com/charter/|stop and assist]]
      * Affect what other labs believe on the object level (about AI capabilities or risk in general, or regarding particular memes)
          * Practice [[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vZzg8NS7wBtqcwhoJ/nearcast-based-deployment-problem-analysis#SelectiveInformationSharing|selective information sharing]]
          * Demonstrate AI risk (or provide evidence about it)
      * Negotiate with other labs, or affect other labs' incentives or meta-level beliefs
  * Affect public opinion, media, and politics
      * Publish research
      * Make demos or public statements
      * Release or deploy AI systems
  * Improve their culture or operations
      * Improve operational security
      * Affect attitudes of effective leadership
      * Affect attitudes of researchers
      * Make a plan for alignment (e.g., [[https://openai.com/blog/our-approach-to-alignment-research/|OpenAI's]]); share it; update and improve it; and coordinate with capabilities researchers, alignment researchers, or other labs if relevant
      * Make plans for what to do with powerful AI (e.g. a process for producing powerful aligned AI given some type of advanced AI system, or a specification for parties interacting peacefully)
      * Improve their ability to make themselves (selectively) transparent
  * Try to better understand the future, the strategic landscape, risks, and possible actions
  * Acquire resources (money, hardware, talent, influence over states, status/prestige/trust, etc.)
  * Affect other actors' resources
      * Affect the flow of talent between labs or between projects
  * Plan, execute, or participate in [[https://arbital.com/p/pivotal/|pivotal acts]] or [[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/etNJcXCsKC6izQQZj/pivotal-outcomes-and-pivotal-processes|processes]]
  * Capture scarce resources
      * E.g., language data from language model users

//Primary author: Zach Stein-Perlman//