Stuart Russell

it's it's not only the the right thing to do it's it's completely essential i mean there isn't there isn't a bigger motivation than this do you feel like you're winning or losing it feels um

like things are moving somewhat in the right direction.

You know, it's a ding-dong battle, as David Coleman used to say in an exciting football match.

In 2023, right, so GPT-4 came out, and then we issued the PAWS statement that was signed by a lot of leading AI researchers.

And then in May, there was the extinction statement, which included...

Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis and Dario Amadei, other CEOs as well, saying, yeah, this is an extinction risk on the level with nuclear war.

And I think governments listened at that point.

The UK government earlier that year had said, well, you know, we don't need to regulate AI, you know, full speed ahead.

Technology is good for you.

And by June, they had completely changed.

And Rishi Sunak announced that he was going to hold this global AI safety summit in England.

And he wanted...

London to be the global hub for AI regulation and so on.

And then, you know, in the beginning of November of 23, 28 countries, including the US and China, signed a declaration saying, you know, AI presents catastrophic risks and it's urgent that we address them and so on.

So there it felt like, wow, they're listening.

They're going to do something about it.

And then I think, you know, the amount of money going into AI was already ramping up.

And the tech companies pushed back.

And this narrative took hold that the US in particular has to win the race against China.

The Trump administration completely dismissed any concerns about safety explicitly.