EA - Organizing a debate with experts and MPs to raise AI xrisk awareness: a possible blueprint by Otto

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: Organizing a debate with experts and MPs to raise AI xrisk awareness: a possible blueprint, published by Otto on April 19, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Thanks to Leon Lang from University of Amsterdam for proposing this post and reviewing the draft. Any views expressed in this post are not necessarily his.We (Existential Risk Observatory) have organized a public debate (recording here, photos here) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands with the purpose of creating more awareness of AI existential risk among policymakers and other leading voices of the societal debate. We want to share our experience in this post, because we think others might be able to follow a similar approach, and because we expect this to have significant xrisk-reducing net effects.GoalsOur high-level goal is to reduce existential risk, especially from AGI, by informing the public debate. We think more awareness will be net positive because of increased support for risk-reducing regulation and increased attention for AI safety work (more talent, more funding, more institutes working on the topic, more diverse actors, and more priority).For this debate, we focused on:Informing leaders of the societal debate (such as journalists, opinion makers, scientists, artists) about AI existential risk. This should help to widen the Overton window, increase the chance that this group of people will inform others, and therefore raise AI existential risk awareness in society.Informing politicians about AI existential risk, to increase the chance that risk-reducing policies will get enacted.StrategyWe used a debate setup with AI existential risk authorities and Members of Parliament (MPs). The strategy was that the MPs would get influenced by the authorities in this setting. We already contacted MPs and MP assistants before and had meetings with several. In order to be invited to meetings with MPs and/or MP assistants, we think that having published in mainstream media, having a good network, and having good policy proposals, are all helpful. If budget is available, hiring a lobbyist and a PR person is both helpful as well (we have a freelance senior PR person and a medior volunteer lobbyist).Two Dutch MPs attended our debate. For them, advantages might include getting (media) attention and informing themselves. Stuart Russell agreed to be our keynote speaker (remote), and several other experts who all had good AI existential risk expertise attended as well. Additionally, we found a moderator with existing AI existential risk knowledge, which was important in making sure the debate went well. Finally, we found a leading debate center in Amsterdam (Pakhuis de Zwijger) willing to host the debate. We promoted our debate on our own social media, through the venue, we were mentioned in the prominent Dutch Future Affairs newsletter, and we promoted our event in EA whatsapp groups. This was sufficient to sell out the largest debate hall in Amsterdam (320 seats, tickets were free).We organized this event in the Netherlands mainly because this is where we are most active. However, since the event was partially focused on getting policy implemented, it should be considered to organize events such as this debate especially where policy is most urgently needed (DC, but perhaps also Beijing, Brussels, or London).ProgramWe started with an introductory talk, after which we played some documentary fragments. After this introduction, our main guest Stuart Russell gave a talk and audience Q&A on AI existential risk. We closed with the 5-person panel, consisting of Queeny Rajkowski (MP for VVD, the largest governing party, center-right, with a portfolio including Digitization and Cybersecurity), Lammert van Raan (MP for the Party for the Animals, a medium-sized left party focusing on animal rights and climate), Mark Br...