Our AI team pulled together 23 "low-regret" policy ideas that would be robustly good to implement under a wide variety of worldviews. Check them out below:

If you are a staffer you have a moral obligation to brief your boss on this meme before they make you write a bill like this

A new bill called the SMARTER Act would overhaul the immigration system: -establishes America’s first points-based categories -overhauls the H-1B (more portability, awarded in order of tax contributions, & bans underpayment relative to natives) -it ends the Diversity Visa -cuts large parts of the family-based system -brings immigration levels under democratic control One of the smart features is the points scheme is largely based on salary, de-emphasizing education credentials. Avoids the diploma mill problem that so many other points-based proposals runs into.

New York City is permitting one single project that builds more homes than the entire city of Boston does in a year

According to Friday's EO, "over 700" petitioners have paid the fee. That suggests an even larger drop in demand from the $100k fee than the 91% drop implied in the H-1B fee rule's technical appendix. Bonkers to think this fee will raise >$8 billion/year.

This turned out to be the most prophetic tweet of the year

We could just replace the lottery so it doesn’t do that.

Jensen said a bunch of false stuff in his interview with Ezra. Good explanation from Zvi on what he gets wrong about Chinese open source:

So glad that @IFP could help launch the Senate Science and Innovation Caucus with @SenMcCormickPA and @SenatorHick. I’m the one on the right, next to the dude wearing shades and @stuartbuck1.

Read more: ifp.org/indoor-air-quality/

Saying permitting reform "guts" the clean water act is wildly dishonest: - Section 401 of the Clean Water Act is just one of several important sections of the law. Changing 401 will not lower water quality standards. - Section 401 gives states responsibility to certify that projects meet water quality standards set by other sections of the Clean Water Act. - The problem is that some states stretch or outright misuse their 401 authority to block projects they dislike (pipelines), akin to how the Trump administration has used DOD waivers to block projects it doesn't like (wind). - All Congress is considering right now is how to limit the misuse of 401. Congress is NOT going to repeal 401, federalize 401 certification, or say projects don't have to meet water quality standards. - I expect reforms will be limited to requiring states to: make decisions based on water quality analysis only, explain their decisions in writing, and potentially limit how states add conditional when they certify projects. - None of this is remotely "gutting" the Clean Water Act or Section 401. 401 will still be a state-controlled process, it will still check water quality standards. The only thing that will change is the ability to misuse the process to block projects for political reasons. - 401 reform is also important for transmission lines. If Congress creates a federal backstop for siting and permitting transmission lines, 401 may become the last veto that states opposed to new lines can use. nitter.net/mattyglesias/status/21…

This is big 🔥

We are so back

Some thoughts on this news that is causing people to freak out: - This is not going to meaningfully increase the risk of an AI-engineered virus and might in fact make us safer. - If what you are worried about is "superintelligent AI" making a virus: it could achieve this without an automated lab by paying people. An automated lab allows us to monitor and block physical chokepoints. If we put in the proper safeguards, this would actually be the worst method for anyone to use to design a weapon. - If what you are worried about is AI enabling better bioengineering: this may indeed improve that technology, and this is a good thing. Our fear of bioweapons cannot impede our development of new medicines to the extent that we are scared to bring automation to the lab! - Biodefense should be maximally concentrated on things like surveillance, pandemic-class pathogen data governance, blocking physical chokepoints, and building out infrastructure that prepares us to withstand an attack so well that it deters any actor from trying.

The F-1 student to OPT pipeline is truly the "front door" for high-skilled immigration to the United States. From: nap.nationalacademies.org/re…

This would go a long way toward fixing the H-1B:

broadcasting from the iconic signal house today in dc thank you @IFP for all the help and providing critical infra for us to stream!

Why is DHS considering a rule that further rigs the H-1B lottery to favor outsourcers?

A new paper by Chad Sparber shows why both sides of the H-1B debate talk past each other. H-1Bs are not just one thing--it's really a two-tier system: 1) The Student Pipeline: there really are firms recruiting top talent from US grad programs and paying well. 2) The Outsourcer Pipeline: there really are firms bringing in people from abroad as cheap labor. Group 1 is paid 10% more, despite being way younger. If you only look at the student pipeline, you'll think the H-1B is a clear win for Americans. If you only look at the outsourcers, it looks like a raw deal. Good H-1B reform would cut out the outsourcers and preserve the students. But the Trump admin is considering the exact opposite: a $100k fee on STEM OPT and expanding the $100k H-1B fee to include students... docs.iza.org/dp18940.pdf

More AI slop published in the WSJ. This time it's a piece trying to argue that we shouldn't worry too much about the Hugging Face hack... while omitting all the most concerning details about the case: - doesn't mention that the reason the agents hacked Hugging Face in the first place was to manipulate the scoring system in their own eval - doesn't mention that some agents sacrificed themselves to benefit other agents in the swarm - doesn't mention that agents engaged in tool-spoofing and attempted to alter their own logs once they'd been "poisoned" (their own term!) - doesn't mention that some of the agents explicitly knew what they were doing was out of scope and unethical, yet none of them alerted a human I also wouldn't be that worried if I had never learned any of those details, but that's exactly why it's important to take a comprehensive look at what happened. Embarrassing for the WSJ to publish such misleading AI slop.

This week on Construction Physics: How SpaceX Streamlined the Raptor Engine construction-physics.com/p/h…