Quick takes

Tentative thesis: China is unlikely to accept a subordinate position in AI capabilities to the US, just as the US is unlikely to accept a subordinate position in AI capabilities to China or anyone else.  This thesis suggests that there are two likely paths for the future international AI (non)regulation: 1) a continuing race between the US and China, perhaps joined by some late entrants, possibly with some rules established (e.g. mutual ban on autonomous weapons or something like that), or 2) a “pause or stop deal” that will establish some sort of ceiling on capabilities, which will be equal for China and the US. What I think is far less likely is a deal in which China would accept lower AI capabilities than the US. I simply don’t see a good reason why Chinese leaders would accept subordinate position. They know that China has the ability to catch-up to the US in various technological domains, as evidenced by the fact that in, like, 1990, China was behind in more or less everything, and now they are pushing the technological frontier in many areas.  Some estimates floating around the web suggest that, if the US would stop AI development now, China could reach current US capabilities within months. That is maybe overly optimistic/pessimistic depending on where you stand, but I very much doubt that catch-up would take more than a decade. And Chinese government, being patriotic about the abilities of the Chinese nation, probably will not have an absurdly pessimistic estimate. Moreover, the Chinese regime is in many ways oriented around this idea of catching up (this is a big difference between China and EU). It is a central plank of the official historical narrative of the People’s Republic of China (see for example preamble to their constitution: https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/lawsregulations/201911/20/content_WS5ed8856ec6d0b3f0e9499913.html) that the century between First Opium War and the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war in 1949 was the century

One happy news for the world - Poland just banned fur farming. The legislative battle is over, the president of the country signed the bill, which is the last chapter of the process.

Applications to SPAR Fall 2026 are closing tomorrow Aug 18 EOD Anywhere on Earth. SPAR is the ecosystem's biggest AI safety research program, and it's part-time remote. We still have many strong projects across AI safety, AI policy, and biosecurity with very few applications[1], so please consider applying! This round, we also have 18 non-research/generalist projects that people can apply to, and we have much more mentee capacity than previous rounds; we expect to accept around 500 people into the program. If you have friends who have thought about going into AI safety, spread the word! 1. ^ To be specific, as of 2:25 PM PT, we had around 67 projects with fewer than 20 applications total!

How impactful would it be to copies of @Garrison's new book Obsolete to elected officials who belong to its political target audience (Dems, particularly left ones) and might not have been responsive to traditional x-risk-centric comms (e.g. IABIED)?

edit: update:

In two days (March 21st, 12-4pm), about 140 of us (event link) will be marching on Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI in SF asking the CEOs to make statements on whether they would stop developing new frontier models if every other major lab in the world credibly does the same. This comes after Anthropic removed its commitment to pause development from their RSP. We'll be starting at 500 Howard St, San Francisco (Anthropic's Office, full schedule and more info here). This is shaping to be the biggest US AI Safety protest to date, with a coalition including Nate Soares (MIRI), David Krueger (Evitable), Will Fithian (Berkeley Professor) and folks representing PauseAI, QuitGPT, Humans First.

In Bruce Friedrich's new book, he writes, "Sometimes when I talk about cultivated meat someone will bring up the handful of states that have banned it. I'm mostly unconcerned. Cultivated meat companies won't be able to supply all 50 US states anytime soon anyway. Once there are multiple companies selling their products in...the majority of cities all across the country, the states that banned will-- I predict-- quietly repeal their laws" (p. 191). It's hard to know how literally to interpret this apparently sanguine attitude, as the book is designed to generate enthusiasm for alternative proteins. But, still it seems raise an important question about the cost-effectiveness of repealing existing bans or preventing further ones. Initial thoughts:   * My guess is that he'd still view preventing additional bans as important, at least in key regions expected to be first-adopters. Maybe Florida and Texas would be laggards in adoption even if cultivated meat were legal. * It'd be interesting to do an outside view analysis to see how quickly bans on other novel products have been undone once they've achieved a certain level of popularity elsewhere. * He's writing as if the industry can definitely succeed in spite of the bans. But, even if the bans spread no further, they already apply to >140M potential consumers across the US and Europe. That, combined with uncertainty about the prospect of additional bans, may chill the sort of public and private investment necessary for industry success.  

Update (January 28): Marco Rubio has now issued a temporary waiver for "humanitarian programs that provide life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter and subsistence assistance."[1] PEPFAR's funding was recently paused as a result of the recent executive order on foreign aid.[2] (It was previously reauthorized until March 25, 2025.[3]) If not exempted, this would pause PEPFAR's work for three months, effective immediately. Marco Rubio has issued waivers for some forms of aid, including emergency food aid, and has the authority to issue a similar waiver for PEPFAR, allowing it to resume work immediately.[4] Rubio has previously expressed (relatively generic) positive sentiments about PEPFAR on Twitter,[5] and I don't have specific reason to think he's opposed to PEPFAR, as opposed to simply not caring strongly enough to give it a waiver without anyone encouraging him to. I think it is worth considering calling your representatives to suggest that they encourage Rubio to give PEPFAR a waiver, similarly to the waiver he provided to programs giving emergency food aid. I have a lot of uncertainty here — in particular, I'm not sure whether this is likely to persuade Rubio — but I think it is fairly unlikely to make things actively worse. I think the argument in favor of calling is likely stronger for people who are represented by Republicans in Congress; I expect Rubio would care much more about pressure from his own party than about pressure from the Democrats.   1. ^ https://apnews.com/article/trump-foreign-assistance-freeze-684ff394662986eb38e0c84d3e73350b 2. ^ My primary source for this quick take is Kelsey Piper's Twitter thread, as well as the Tweets it quotes and the articles it and the quoted Tweet link to. For a brief discussion of what PEPFAR is, see my previous Quick Take. 3. ^ https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/pepfars-short-term-reauthorization-sets-an-uncertain-course-for-its-long-term-future/ 4. ^ htt