Non-Targeting
Nothing here is an accusation, or a call to act against anyone.
This site argues for a legal mechanism that does not exist. Everything below follows from that, and I want it stated without hedging, because the subject matter makes the hedged version worse than useless.
There is no bounty
No bounty described on this site is offered, funded, or collectable. There is no fund, no claims process, and no party who would pay. The penalties I discuss are hypothetical statutory penalties in a hypothetical statute. Nobody can violate a law that has not been written, so nobody described here has done anything wrong under it, and no reward is available to anyone for anything.
Nobody is being asked to investigate anyone
The mechanism I describe would, if enacted, pay people for evidence. That is a claim about how a future legal regime could be designed. It is not a request, and it is emphatically not a request to start now. I am not asking readers to surveil colleagues, collect documents, infiltrate laboratories, approach insurers, or contact authorities about any person or organisation. Private policing in the absence of a legal framework is exactly the failure mode the policy-research disclaimer on every page warns about, and I would consider anyone acting on this material that way to have badly misread it.
Who gets named
The line is public presence. This site names and quotes people and organisations who have put their views into public: in blog posts, papers, books, talks, interviews, tweets, company announcements. Where I do, I cite the source. People without that kind of public presence are not named. Where a private person’s view matters to an argument, I describe the view and leave the person out of it.
Being named is not being accused. A company, a laboratory, a researcher or an incident named here is named on the basis of public reporting, published research, or the party’s own statements. Those references illustrate a general argument about incentives. None of them is an allegation that the named party has broken any law, breached any duty, or acted in bad faith. Where I describe conduct I think is risky, I mean risky in the ordinary sense that reasonable people disagree about frontier research, not culpable. And where I quote someone in order to argue with them, that is what it is: an argument with a view they chose to make public, and nothing more.
Pseudonyms are respected, always. I will never connect a pseudonymous writer to their legal name, or help anyone else do it. If you have a public presence under your own name and would rather be cited here under a handle or pseudonym instead, ask and it will be done, no reasons needed. What you said stays on the page; only the name attached to it changes.
Public material is not taken down. I do not remove accurately cited quotations or material that was published in a public space, on request or otherwise. If the original is later deleted, the citation still records that it was said, and where it was said.
Changed minds are linked, every time. People change their views, and a quotation that has been left behind by its author should say so. Wherever I cite a view that its holder has since publicly revised or abandoned, I link to where they said so, and where the change matters to the argument I quote it on the page. On a response page this appears directly under the citation, as “has since changed their view”. If you know of a change I have missed, including your own, please tell me.
Several passages describe hypothetical people: an unnamed researcher at an unnamed lab, a firm that does not exist, a scenario constructed to make a mechanism legible. These are constructed examples. Resemblance to any real person or organisation is not intended, and where a real case would fit the shape of an example, that is a fact about the shape of the example.
Corrections, and what I will change
Please get in touch if any of these apply:
- I have misquoted you, or represented your view unfairly. I will fix it. The standard on this site is that the people I disagree with should recognise their own position in how I state it, and missing that is my failure.
- You have changed your mind. Send me where you said so and I will link it wherever the old view is cited.
- You would like to be cited under a pseudonym. Done.
- You are a private person and I have named you, or a hypothetical example reads as though it describes you or your organisation. I will change it, regardless of whether I think the reading is fair.
What I will not do is remove accurate, cited material that was said in public.
What I am actually claiming
That the current incentive structure around frontier research is badly shaped, that mechanism design is a more promising lever than exhortation, and that this particular mechanism deserves more attention than it has had. Those are claims about institutions, and arguing with the named people who disagree about them is part of making those claims honestly. They are not claims about the character or conduct of the people working inside those institutions, most of whom I take to be acting in good faith on a problem they did not create.