There's something deeply unsafe about safetyism. We wish people a safe flight—yet flying commercially is almost perfectly safe. We don't wish people a safe drive—yet US roads are the equivalent of a 737 crashing every 48h, killing everyone aboard. But we scare people when they get in an airplane but not when they get in a car. The biggest opportunity we have to improve road safety is self-driving, yet there's lots of anti-self-driving safety talk, and self-driving is held to a *dramatically* superhuman safety bar. The din about AI safety has reached extreme tenor—yet there have been zero material safety incidents. And the positive benefits of AI could improve and save many lives. But the safetyists say we must slow down. We destroyed the nuclear power industry in this country nominally out of safety concerns, yet joule for joule nuclear power is *by far* the safest form of energy, even accounting for Chernobyl (a genuine disaster) and Three Mile Island (generally a non-event). Building and fire codes are supposedly there to protect us from unsafe buildings. But actually the red tape makes development slow and sometimes impossible. So the safetyism protects us from jobs, innovation, and reindustrialization. TSA was there nominally to protect us from terrorist threats—yet to the extent it pushes passengers at the margins from safe airplanes to dangerous roads, it actually kills not just time and money but actual humans. Safetyism is deeply unsafe.

Prediction: Tesla will keep FSD an in-house advantage for a couple years, and then once others start getting close will begin licensing it for other cars—just as they opened up the Supercharger network.

Last month I wrote about how we can build a positive and safe future for everyone: Every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace required to train its models safely, and the ability to take its own actions to ensure that happens. The reality is: - People won't want to use agents that are misaligned with them and that don't do what they ask, so labs have a strong natural incentive to make their models more aligned. There is a lot of debate about slowing progress on capabilities until alignment catches up. My view is that trust and alignment are quickly becoming the most important capabilities that will differentiate agents and models. Any lab that doesn't focus on alignment will fall behind. - Labs face significant liability if their models cause harm, so they have a strong incentive to prevent this as well. Meta delayed shipping Muse for several months to focus on safety and security. We didn't call for everyone else to do this before we would. We just did it as part of our day-to-day work because it was clearly the right thing for people and for us. I'm proud of the security foundations we've built. - Engaging independent evaluators and advisors is industry best practice. MSL already does this today in several areas because it helps produce better work. Other labs can just do this too. In general, it would be helpful for there to be a larger and more diverse ecosystem of evaluators. - Committing the significant majority of compute towards serving people rather than racing towards recursive self-improvement is one of the best ways to ensure we develop this technology safely. Meta has made this commitment and other labs can do this as well. I believe the key to building a positive future for everyone is maintaining the right balance of power. This is within our power to do.

Pretty terrible that we used 5 years’ interceptors in just a few months. Let’s replace these crappy old interceptors with something better. Proud to be helping a few founders who are working on this.

What a legend! In 2015, @bscholl pitched @boomsupersonic to his former boss, Jeff Bezos. Bezos passed and wrote this in his 2015 letter to shareholders: "There are certain things that only large companies can do. With a tip of the hat to our Seattle neighbors, no matter how good an entrepreneur you are, you’re not going to build an all-composite 787 in your garage startup – not one you’d want to fly in anyway”. Blake took it personal and proved Jeff wrong big time. @theallinpod

We do need clear legal accountability in AI: - if I hit you with a baseball bat, it’s my fault not the bat’s and not the bat maker’s - if someone makes a bat that hits people on its own, that’s its maker’s responsibility. So AI makers should have Section 230-like immunity for user action. And full liability for uncontrolled actions of their models.

Boom is pacing the development of supersonic jets, ensuring we make jets that are comfortable, reliable, and safe. Also this is not news. We've always done it this way, and we don't need anyone in Washington to force us. It's in our power to do the right thing.

Regulation destroyed the nuclear power industry entirely in this country. Boeing hasn’t launched a new airliner in 22 years—but regulation didn’t prevent them from screwing up the 737 MAX and killing 346 people. Regulation doesn’t prevent the safety problems it allegedly solves. It just allows the incumbents to be fat, lazy and dumb—and to operate as if they are branches of the government.

What Is To Be Done? I propose a simple plan: Big AI companies should be allowed to build AI as fast and aggressively as they can – but not allowed to achieve regulatory capture, not allowed to establish a government-protect cartel that is insulated from market competition due to incorrect claims of AI risk. This will maximize the technological and societal payoff from the amazing capabilities of these companies, which are jewels of modern capitalism. Startup AI companies should be allowed to build AI as fast and aggressively as they can. They should neither confront government-granted protection of big companies, nor should they receive government assistance. They should simply be allowed to compete. If and as startups don’t succeed, their presence in the market will also continuously motivate big companies to be their best – our economies and societies win either way. Open source AI should be allowed to freely proliferate and compete with both big AI companies and startups. There should be no regulatory barriers to open source whatsoever. Even when open source does not beat companies, its widespread availability is a boon to students all over the world who want to learn how to build and use AI to become part of the technological future, and will ensure that AI is available to everyone who can benefit from it no matter who they are or how much money they have. To offset the risk of bad people doing bad things with AI, governments working in partnership with the private sector should vigorously engage in each area of potential risk to use AI to maximize society’s defensive capabilities. This shouldn’t be limited to AI-enabled risks but also more general problems such as malnutrition, disease, and climate. AI can be an incredibly powerful tool for solving problems, and we should embrace it as such. To prevent the risk of China achieving global AI dominance, we should use the full power of our private sector, our scientific establishment, and our governments in concert to drive American and Western AI to absolute global dominance, including ultimately inside China itself. We win, they lose. And that is how we use AI to save the world. It’s time to build.

Wow - @pmarca called this three years ago. TL/DR every bad regulation has a plausible sounding moral cover story—and a secret industrial interest that stands to benefit Regulatory capture is evil.