The way I read it: reading big chunks, Will on 80000hours podcast

What we can do about it

In fact, there are ways we can prepare for these challenges, today. For example, we can:

  1. Prevent extreme and hard-to-reverse concentration of power, by establishing institutions and policies now. For instance, we can ensure that data centers and essential components of the semiconductor supply chain are distributed across democratic countries and that access to frontier AI continues to be available to many parties, both within and across countries.
  2. Empower responsible actors: Increase the chance that those actors who wield the most power over the development of superintelligence (such as politicians and AI company CEOs) are responsible, competent, and accountable.
  3. Build AI tools to improve collective decision-making. We could begin building, testing, and integrating AI tools which we want to be in wide use by the time the intelligence explosion is underway, across epistemics, deal-making, and decision-making advice.
  4. Remove obstacles to applying superintelligent AI to downstream challenges, for example by unblocking bureaucracy which makes it unnecessarily difficult to use advanced AI tools in government.
  5. Get started early on institutional design for new areas of governance, including on the rights of digital beings and the legal framework for property claims on offworld resources.
  6. Raise awareness and improve our understanding of the intelligence explosion and each of the challenges that follow from it, so that it takes less time to get up to speed at the crucial moments when decisions do need to be made.