@bahradx
JD, PhD | AI & Biosecurity Law | Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Law & AI (views don't reflect my employer's)
Lina Khan @linamkhanWe are looking to hire lawyers to do legal and policy research on the laws that structure the economy, from banking law, administrative law, and antimonopoly laws, to state and municipal authorities. Excavating the full range of public economic laws will be a key component of delivering major economic change. Apply here to come work with us:
Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari @RepYassAnsariTop of the Democratic agenda on day 1 needs to be a pause on advanced AI development, regulation of this out of control industry, and a ban on artificial superintelligence.
Mackenzie Arnold @MackenZ_arnoldI’d expect a LOT of AI hearings and oversight in 2027. A few topics on my shortlist: 1. Monitoring | the biggest AI cyber incidents this summer went undetected for far too long. What are you doing to make sure that doesn’t happen again? What steps are you taking to proactively identify knew or concerning behavior? 2. Incident reporting | when something goes wrong, how can we be assured you’ll tell us? What has already happened that we don’t know about? 3. Auditing | what access are you providing to independent evaluators and the USG? What is needed to actually verify your safety practices? 4. Whistleblowers and Retaliation | what barriers are you creating to raising concerns, cooperating with auditors, and honest critique of your companies? What NDAs do you have in place? 5. Incident response and control | In the event of an emerging risk or threat to critical infrastructure, how will you respond? What have you don’t to prepare and remedy harms? 6. AI R&D and RSI | what steps are you currently taking to automate or accelerate AI development? What commitments will you make to monitoring and constraining those efforts as to avoid serious risk or surprise? How will you communicate with us, the USG, and the public about progress such that we are aware 7. Concerning model behavior + uncontrolled agent behavior | how are you monitoring for and reporting behaviors like obfuscation, deception, accumulation of resources, self-exfiltration, law breaking, etc. that would pose unique risks to national security and control of the technology? 8. Agent attribution | what steps are you taking to ensure that agents can be identified and responsibility assigned?
Rachel Janfaza @racheljanfazaTalarico is 37 Ossoff is 39 Kiros is 29 El Sayed is 42 Forstag is 32 Andrews is 46 Rutinel is 31 Sand is 44 This is a new generation of Democrats.
Bo French @bofrenchTonight wasn’t the night our campaign had hoped for. To everyone who stood alongside us, gave your time, and believed in what we set out to accomplish, thank you. I will never forget your dedication, your friendship, and, above all, your love for the great state of Texas. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” My dreams for Texas and America remain undiminished, as does my faith in the indomitable spirit of the people of the Lone Star State. I’m not going anywhere — because we have work to do. Onward.
Adam Kovacevich @adamkovacIt's funny - the folks trying to wishcast AI into higher salience look at this and say "23% is really high!" Sure, it increased fast. But zoom out, and AI / data centers had the lowest salience ratings of the 5 issues the exit poll asked about:
Logan Kolas @Logan_KolasAn absolute bloodbath and a gift to China.
Archie Hall @ArchieHallIn praise of distillation. We (@kuhhbin) argue in @TheEconomist this week against efforts to ban Chinese models trained in part on American ones. OpenAI and Anthropic may dislike distillation, but: — Price competition is good for the ecosystem — Paradoxically, distillation may be good for national security, both in propagating US developers' safeguards on cyber/bio risk to Chinese models, and in keeping China in fast-follower mode — The US developers' own IP claims here are pretty flimsy, since distillation isn't all that different to the 'fair use' defense they're using for the training data they hoover up.
zhod @zhodonxSam Altman on Anthropic letting Claude end abusive chats: "a very dangerous path" Matthew Berman asked him about Anthropic's new rule that lets the model disengage from users who keep abusing it. "We do not ascribe personhood to our models." "I think this is like a very dangerous path to start down" "I hope we come to an understanding that this technology is not a person" "But you can imagine all of these ways where things go very wrong" & Anthropic filed its S-1 yesterday. Should Claude be allowed to walk out on you if you're abusive?
Alex Tamkin @AlexTamkinNew Anthropic research: How AI agents shape experts' judgment calls When experts delegate work to an agent, do they still make the key decisions? We tested this in a randomized trial with 50 professional data analysts.
Cody Fenwick @codytfenwickWow, I'm really disappointed by this superficial and frankly unprofessional piece in @CJR. There are many significant problems: 1. Calling frontier AI systems "autocomplete machines" is false and misleading. I don't know how we're still having this discussion in at the point where AI systems are routinely developing novel solutions to decades-old mathematical mysteries. 2. The claim that anthropomorphizing AI systems removes "accountability" or "acknowledgment" of flaws in the systems is also unsupported and provably false. Many people criticize Anthropic for "anthropomorphizing" Claude, but just read one of their system cards — they also acknowledge and take account of the systems' many flaws. 3. The piece recommends talking to the "experts," suggesting they all agree, but there is widespread disagreement among experts about how to characterize AI model behavior. Many, many experts do accept the "rogue" framing, e.g. Pretending that only the experts that agree with you exist is irresponsible journalism. 4. The piece's admonition not to "let anyone blow AI smoke up your ass" is unprofessional and also bad advice, as it doesn't provide any tools for actually assessing claims aside from knee-jerk skepticism. The piece claims that fears about catastrophic risk or the possibility of AI consciousness — again topics that many experts take seriously — are just about building the companies' public image, but this is merely asserted without evidence. 5. When the piece gets around to trying to offer an argument for its thesis, that AI systems can't go rogue, it offers no actual evidence or reasoning. It doesn't engage with the facts of the Hugging Face hack or other related incidents. It just asserts that AI agent actions "shouldn't make the cut." What's most baffling about all this is these are very controversial claims, not only among AI experts but with journalism. Many highly credible news outlets have embraced the "rogue" characterization. It's possible they're making a mistake, but this piece offers no actual reason to think so.
