I'm getting married and will be offline for about a week. I recognize there's no crazier time in AI policy world to be offline, but I'm going to try my best to be present for my family and friends and my new husband. See everyone next week!

Unfortunately, it is one of the actually good coffee shop chains in DC. Also every location usually has free tables, and it’s open later than other options I always offer Spot of Tea as an option for similar reasons, but few people take me up on it!

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Export controls work. "Export controls just make Chinese companies work harder or catch up" is propaganda ass shite

hm...

Actually “this guy” is one of the foremost experts on this topic. The US does have a say. It has extraordinary leverage over DUV because so much of it is made using US components and knowledge. Also the Dutch should realize they have a stake in safeguarding DUV too. DUV is being used for AI capable chips which train Chinese AI models. China is actively partnering with Russia, the Netherlands’/EU’s biggest security threat, on military AI. Not to mention China has launched cyberattacks and cyber espionage campaigns on the Dutch. It is in the Dutch interest, too, to stop exporting and servicing DUV.

Yes, DUV is extremely consequential and it's important to close this loophole. Yes, the US could act unilaterally to prevent further exports of DUV through a lever called the FDPR. And, our allies would view this as a very aggressive action. The bipartisan MATCH Act would require allies to align their SME export controls to ours or face the FDPR. It forces them to take action and gives them a clear timeline and consequences for non-compliance.

over the past week, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about what independent AI evaluations should actually look like in practice. what about conflicts of interest between labs and evaluators? will evaluators actually get meaningful access? what if companies just block the publication of unfavorable findings? these are good and important questions. and we shouldn’t assume voluntary arrangements alone will produce the conditions that credible independent evaluation requires. so i’m very excited to see 100+ researchers, evaluators, and experts — including us at @AVERIorg — laying out minimum conditions for embedded evaluation, including: meaningful independence, strong access, transparency / editorial control, protections against retaliation, and a diversity of perspectives and competencies. and we shouldn’t try to incorporate those principles in ad hoc, one-off agreements, policy is critical to standardizing these safeguards across the industry. glad to see @aievalforum leading on putting these principles on paper.

Great to speak with Louise at @WIRED about US-China dynamics amid discourse about AI cooperation.

Everyone living in Washington on 9/11 remembers that day. I was in my Pentagon City apartment and heard confused voices on the radio discussing a crash at the World Trade Center. My wife, who was working at a long-term care facility across the street, called me to say something had just happened at the Pentagon. I went up to our roof and watched the five-sided building become engulfed in flames, with hundreds of people running away from it in every direction. Walking across the street to find my wife, we thought first responders might need to evacuate the wounded to beds in the care facility, and I stayed around to help if needed. They never did; more people were killed than injured. Instead, we watched out the window as smoke rose from the Pentagon and on television buildings crumbled. That more attacks never materialized was due in part to the enormous effort the United States mobilized after 9/11. After September 11, most anticipated that terror would spread to malls, sporting events, and other places previously seen as utterly safe. Few thought that America would never again suffer a mass casualty attack. By now, on 25th anniversary of 9/11, we’ve learned some lessons along the way. One is the power of national determination. It’s customary to dwell on the post-9/11 failures – Iraq and Afghanistan, detainee treatment, and so on. But preventing mass casualty attacks after September 11, which America did, is a major accomplishment that required the reorganization and reorientation of U.S. government. That was no obvious or easy task. There were mistakes in the war on terror, but there were heroes and successes too. Another is that allies matter. We saw in the years after 9/11 countries – Canada, for instance – go to war and suffer losses on our behalf. They did it for themselves, but they also did it for us. We will need friends again one day, and we should treat them like partners now. A third is that we abandon American ideals at our own peril. Fear-based policymaking tends to distort fidelity to them, but this weakens rather than intensifies our efforts. The United States is strongest when we fight in ways that accord with our deepest values. A final lesson of 9/11 is about national unity. It was natural for the moment to fade, and for the fear and resolve that united Americans to one day yield in favor of internal squabbles. But this anniversary should remind us that our enemies are outside and not within, that we are compatriots and not belligerents, and that more that pulls us together than drives us apart. Unity seems like a quaint notion in these polarized days. But we suffer as a country in its absence. Nothing will erase the scars of 9/11 from our national memory, and nothing ever should. But moves toward greater unity would represent a fitting commemoration of that terrible day.

I don't think any team of 3 government regulators could have done as good an investigation with only 6 days on campus as the team from METR/Redwood did. The point of government regulation, though, is that you can get a lot more than 6 days on campus (& more than 3 people)