Foundation for American Innovation

FAI is centrally about innovation. Innovation is good, actually, in almost all contexts, as is building things and letting people do things.

AI is where this gets tricky. People ‘supporting innovation’ are often using that as an argument against all regulation of AI, and indeed I am dismayed to see so many push so hard on this exactly in the one place I think they are deeply wrong, when we could work together on innovation (and abundance) almost anywhere else.

FAI and resident AI studiers Samuel Hammond and Dean Ball are in an especially tough spot, because they are trying to influence AI policy from the right and not get expelled from that coalition or such spaces. There’s a reason we don’t have good alternative options for this. That requires striking a balance.

I’ve definitely had my disagreements with Hammond, including strong disagreements with his 95 theses on AI although I agreed far more than I disagreed, and I had many disagreements with his AI and Leviathan as well. He’s talked on the Hill about ‘open model diplomacy.’

I’ve certainly had many strong disagreements with Dean Ball as well, both in substance and rhetoric. Sometimes he’s the voice of reason and careful analysis, other times (from my perspective) he can be infuriating, most recently in discussions of the Superintelligence Statement, remarkably often he does some of both in the same post. He was perhaps the most important opposer of SB 1047 and went on to a stint at the White House before joining FAI.

Yet here is FAI, rather high on the list. They’re a unique opportunity, you go to war with the army you have, and both Ball and Hammond have stuck their neck out in key situations. Hammond came out opposing the moratorium. They’ve been especially strong on compute governance.

I have private reasons to believe that FAI has been effective and we can expect that to continue, and its other initiatives also mostly seem good. We don’t have to agree on everything else, so long as we all want good things and are trying to figure things out, and I’m confident that is the case here.

I am especially excited that they can speak to the Republican side of the aisle in the R’s native language, which is difficult for most in this space to do.

An obvious caveat is that if you are not interested in the non-AI pro-innovation part of the agenda (I certainly approve, but it’s not obviously a high funding priority for most readers) then you’ll want to ensure it goes where you want it.

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