California state senator Scott Wiener, author of AI safety bills SB 1047 and SB 53, just announced that he is running for Congress! I'm very excited about this, and I wrote a blog post about why.
It’s an uncanny, weird coincidence that the two biggest legislative champions for AI safety in the entire country announced their bids for Congress just two days apart. But here we are.*
In my opinion, Scott Wiener has done really amazing work on AI safety. SB 1047 is my absolute favorite AI safety bill, and SB 53 is the best AI safety bill that has passed anywhere in the country. He's been a dedicated AI safety champion who has spent a huge amount of political capital in his efforts to make us safer from advanced AI.
On Monday, I made the case that donating to Alex Bores -- author of the New York RAISE Act -- calling it a "once in every couple of years opportunity", but flagging that I was also really excited about Scott Wiener.
I plan to have a more detailed analysis posted soon, but my bottom line is that donating to Wiener today is about 75% as good as donating to Bores was on Monday, and that this is also an excellent opportunity that will come up very rarely. (The main reason that it looks less good than donating to Bores is that he's running for Nancy Pelosi's seat, and Pelosi hasn't decided whether she'll retire. If not for that, the two donation opportunities would look almost exactly equally good, by my estimates.)
(I think that donating now looks better than waiting for Pelosi to decide whether to retire; if you feel skeptical of this claim, I'll have more soon.)
I have donated $7,000 (the legal maximum) and encourage others to as well. If you're interested in donating, here's a link.
Caveats:
* If you haven't already donated to Bores, please read about the career implications of political donations before deciding to donate.
* If you are currently working on federal policy, or think that you might be in the near future, you should consider whether it m