Monday AI Brief #14
I’m on vacation, so this week’s newsletter is a bit lighter than usual. I wish I could say that the torrent of AI news was also lighter, but… yeah, not so much.
Our focus this week is on politics and strategy. We explore populist anger about AI, check in with Dean Ball on the Global South’s (lack of) readiness for AGI, and discuss using AI to help us navigate the transition to superintelligence. And for a change of pace, we’ll talk about AI video and what it means for Hollywood.
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My week with the AI populists
Jasmine Sun spent a week in DC and considers the role of populism in AI politics:
And my reductive two-line summary is as follows: All the money is on one side and all the people are on the other. We aren’t ready for how much people hate AI.
It’s a great piece that calls attention to something that’s likely to be a major factor in AI governance over the next year or two. Be sure to check out her recommended reading at the end.
Seedance 2.0
ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 AI video generator just dropped and it’s really good. Perhaps you’ve seen the flood of videos on social media.
M.G. Siegler contemplates the legal and business implications for Hollywood, ending with a great quote from Rhett Reese ($):
In next to no time, one person is going to be able to sit at a computer and create a movie indistinguishable from what Hollywood now releases. True, if that person is no good, it will suck. But if that person possesses Christopher Nolan’s talent and taste (and someone like that will rapidly come along), it will be tremendous.
The Global South isn’t ready
Dean Ball went to India for the AI Impact Summit, worried about whether India and the Global South are ready for advanced AI.
I regret to inform you that I came away even more worried than I went in.
We’re in Triage Mode for AI Policy
Miles Brundage argues that we’ve missed the best window for AI governance and need to make the best of a bad situation:
We are running well behind on that goal, after losing a lot of valuable time in 2025. So we have a lot of work to do, but we also need to focus, and recognize that we aren’t going to totally nail this AI policy thing. At best, we’ll 80/20 it — mitigating 80% of the risks with 20% of the effort that we would have applied in a world with slower AI progress and an earlier start on serious governance.
Rob Wiblin interviews Ajeya Cotra
80,000 Hours’ Rob Wiblin interviews Ajeya Cotra about timelines, early warning systems, effective altruism, and especially the idea of using transformative AI to help solve the risks of transformative AI. I greatly appreciate that they provide a video, a transcript, and a detailed summary of what was covered—that’s super helpful for people who want the content but don’t have time to watch the full interview.
Robots are getting very agile
If you haven’t been keeping up on recent progress in robotics, state of the art robots are getting very impressive indeed. Make sure to scroll down and check out the comparison to last year’s show.