@robertwiblin - Holy shit these quotes from Congress are absolutely

Holy shit these quotes from Congress are absolutely eye-popping: "...this week lawmakers demonstrated a level of AGI situational awareness that would have been unthinkable just months ago. •“Whether it’s American AI or Chinese AI, it should not be released until we know it’s safe. That's why I'm working on a new bill, the AGI Safety Act, that will require AGI to be aligned with human values and require it to comply with laws that apply to humans. This is just common sense.” — Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi • "Mr. Beall, your testimony makes clear that artificial superintelligence, ASI, is one of the largest existential threats that we face right now …. Should we also be concerned that authoritarian states like China or Russia may lose control over their own advanced systems? … And is it possible that a loss of control by any nation-state, including our own, could give rise to an independent AGI or ASI actor that globally we will need to contend with?” — Rep. Jill Tokuda • “Mr. Beall, you noted at the top that maybe we've become numb to the headlines about all of the dangers of AI. I think that might be true. And yet, honestly, what we've heard today, I suspect, has scared the hell out of many of these committee members. Anybody who doesn't feel urgency around this issue is not paying attention.” — Rep. Dusty Johnson Rep. Neal Dunn, meanwhile, brought up the recent Claude-blackmailing-its-developers experiment. Rep. Nathaniel Moran asked about the risks of automated AI R&D. Rep. Ro Khanna brought up the importance of third-party verification of safety standards, and Rep. Seth Moulton proposed a “Geneva Conventions-like agreement that has a chance, at least, at limiting what our adversaries might do with AI at the extremes.” These are the kinds of questions asked by people who seem to actually understand the technology and appreciate its impacts. And while the hearing was unsurprisingly focused on “beat China”, there was a substantive focus on safety concerns, too. The shift extends beyond the CCP Committee. Pete Buttigieg wrote this week that “we are still underreacting on AI,” noting both the “obviously enormous” “physically dangerous or potentially nefarious effects of these technologies,” as well as the potential effects on wealth, jobs, and democracy. “The terms of what it is like to be a human are about to change in ways that rival the transformations of the Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution, only much more quickly,” Buttigieg wrote. In many ways, it echoes Sen. Chris Murphy’s piece from last week — as well as a recent piece from Axios founders Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen. We’ve been here before, most notably in spring 2023. But this time feels different: more grounded, more action-oriented, and more durable. That might just be wishful thinking on my part. Congress does seem poised to pursue a decade-long moratorium on state-level AI regulation (more on that shortly) — a move that certainly does not reflect situational awareness. But I’m cautiously optimistic that the US — and world’s — decisionmakers might finally be rising to the immense challenge that faces them. The question now is whether they can act quickly enough." Link below