Institute for Law & AI

I’m confident that they should be funded at all, the question is if this should be scaled up quite a lot, and what aspects of this would scale in what ways. If you can be convinced that the scaling plans are worthwhile this could justify a sizable donation.

Donate here, or contact them at hello@law-ai.org.

This strategy is potentially super efficient. You have an academic that is mostly funded anyway, and they respond to remarkably small incentives to do something they are already curious about doing. Then maybe they keep going, again with academic funding. If you’re going to do ‘field building’ and talent funnel in a world short on funds for those people, this is doubly efficient. I like it. They’re now moving into hiring an academic fellow, the theory being ~1 year of support to create a permanent new AI safety law professor.

To donate, message one of leaders at the emails listed above.

Hiring staff to carry out longtermist academic legal research and increase the operational capacity of the organization.

The Legal Priorities Project (LPP) applied for funding to hire Suzanne Van Arsdale and Renan Araújo to conduct academic legal research, and Alfredo Parra to perform operations work. All have previously been involved with the LPP, and Suzanne and Renan contributed to the LPP’s research agenda. I’m excited about this grant for reasons related to LPP as an organization, the specific hires they would use the grant for, and the proposed work of the new hires.

Overall, I think the LPP is exciting enough to warrant funding in general, at least for the time being. The goal of the LPP is to generate longtermist legal research that could subsequently be used to influence policymakers in a longtermist direction. Personally, while I don’t think this theory of change is crazy, I’m also not completely sold on it (I have perhaps a more cynical view of policy, where principled academic arguments are rarely causal in policies being enacted, even if they are claimed as justifications). I do, however, think this theory of change is plausible enough that it’s at least worth trying (if done well), especially since the indirect effects (discussed below) also seem most likely positive.

Insofar as the LPP’s theory of change makes sense, I think they’re likely to go about it well. Since they’re a younger organization, they do not yet have a large body of output. Their main piece of output so far is their research agenda. As part of my evaluation, I skimmed the agenda in full and more closely read a couple sections (including the sections on longtermism and biorisk), and I found the work to be at a high level of quality. More specifically, I thought it was well written (thorough without being verbose, expressed concepts clearly – especially for an audience that might not be familiar with longtermism), demonstrated good understanding of longtermism and related concerns (e.g., infohazards), and presented "weird" longtermist concepts in a manner unlikely to be off-putting to those who might be put off by much of the rhetoric around such concepts elsewhere. This work makes me hopeful that future work will also be high quality.

Additionally, the LPP team includes many individuals with stellar academic credentials. I’m usually skeptical of leaning too heavily on academic credentials in making assessments (I tend to consider them only one of many reasonable signals for intelligence and competence), but I’d imagine that such credentials are particularly important here given LPP’s theory of change. My sense is that policymakers and other legal scholars are much more inclined to take academic ideas seriously if they’re promoted by those with prestigious credentials.

Furthermore, I think it often makes sense to fund newer organizations without long track records if there is a plausible argument in favor (and no apparent large downside risk). The upside of such grants can be large, and the wasted effort and resources if they don’t work out will probably be only a minor downside. I think such arguments are also stronger for organizations such as the LPP that are operating in newer areas, or with a theory of change different than what has come before, as their progress (or lack thereof) provides valuable information about not only the organization, but also potentially the whole area.

In addition to the direct effects from the LPP pursuing its theory of change, I’d imagine the indirect effects here would also most likely be positive. Given my impression of the LPP’s ability to promote longtermist ideas faithfully and in a non-offputting manner, and additionally the fact that it would be lending academic credibility to such ideas, my sense is that the LPP would, if anything, be good for the reputation of longtermism more broadly. Additionally, the LPP might allow for those involved to gain career capital.

Regarding the specific hires, I am also enthusiastic – due to their past work and educational credentials. Suzanne was the main author of the “Synthetic Biology and Biorisk” section of the LPP’s research agenda, and Renan was a co-author of the “Longtermism” section, both of which impressed me. Additionally, both have impressive academic credentials (Suzanne has a J.D. from Harvard, Renan has an M.Sc. from LSE), which I believe is valuable for reasons I outlined above. While I have less of a sense of the quality of Alfredo’s work than that of Suzanne and Renan (and, as a researcher myself, I trust my judgment less on questions related to operations than to research), it’s a positive signal that Alfredo has a Ph.D. from TU Munich and previously worked for four years in operations at EAF/CLR, and the fact that he has been involved with the LPP so far and they’re interested in hiring him is a further signal. I also think that operations work is important, and I am fairly inclined to defer to (seemingly competent) organizations when they claim a particular individual that they are familiar with would be a good operations hire.

Finally, I support this grant because I support the proposed work for the hires. According to the application, Suzanne will work on the topic of dual-use research, and Renan’s work will focus on protection of future generations via constitutional law. Both of these areas strike me as sensible areas of research for academic legal work. While Suzanne’s topic does contain potential downsides (such as infohazards) if handled poorly, her section within the research agenda on “Synthetic Biology and Biorisk” contains a subsection on “Information Hazards” which shows she is at least aware of this risk, and the section as a whole demonstrates a nuanced level of thinking that makes me less worried about these potential downsides (and I further update against being worried here given that the LPP as an institution strikes me as presenting an environment where such issues are handled well). Alfredo’s proposed work includes setting up “robust internal systems”. While vague, this work also seems valuable for the organization.