What progress have you made since your last update?

Nov 26th Update:
- After 4 weeks of editing, hiring multiple editors & other contractors (sound mixing, production coordinator, video labeling), we presented a 1h05m rough cut of the SB-1047 documentary at "The Curve" on Sat 23
- We observed an increase of 1.4 points of understanding after watching the documentary, which satisfies our goal or increasing the understanding of different positions held on SB-1047 (we polled 21 participants before and after the screening)

- We observe a weak correlation between the initial position of participants on the bill, and how likely they are to recommend the documentary to a friend. The fact that the correlation is weak is positive, showcasing that the documentary was recommended (& not recommended) by people with different positions.

What are your next steps?

- I no longer believe that it is possible to finish this project in "6 weeks" as previously proposed for the funding level that we reached
- My current estimate for when the movie will be out is now at best late January 2025, if not early February
- I believe that many of the key players who would have benefited from seeing the documentary earlier rather than later have already benefited from watching the rough cut at the curve, or will hear about it from there and could see it upon request or at targeted screenings.
- My new goal is now to have a final cut published before a new bill is announced or just after it is announced (estimated date for when the next bill is announced: February)

Is there anything others could help you with?

- My previous budget estimation were too optimistic and did not take into account the cost & time of motion graphics / animation, the cost of hiring a composer / music supervisor, and the cost of hiring an experienced video editor to go from a rough cut to a final cut for 2+ months (which seems to be the minimum I am currently being quoted for).
- Therefore, we are still funding constrained, and I expect that any funding above $55k will be invested towards paying contractors for the post-production (say for animation, music and video editing), with video editing and animation being the two main costs, and music being slightly lower. (Note that video editing was to some extent included in the original manifund project, but animation was not included at all, so this is where I'd expect most extra marginal funding to go).

I think communicating AI risk through debate with a podcast & youtube channel is valuable. I have seen some episodes of Liron debating with people I'd qualify as "tech optimists" (George Hotz, Theo Jaffe, Guillaume Verdon) and I can confirm that he has the "stamina" and patience to go through these debates (as he mentions here).

My current main reservations are:
- framing it as a "doom debate" or a confrontaional "doomers vs non doomers" which could potentially cause harm (making the movement be seen more like an advesarial apocalyptic cult rather than a technical field)
- one of his debate with Guillaume Verdon (around his startup) might have been counterproductive (he repeated the same question about "inputs / outputs", which I think was a fair question, but this didn't signal to the audience that he was engaging with the actual plan from Guillaume, and was criticized on twitter for that).

A few clarifying questions on the actual text:

Just two months into the project, we're already getting 1k+ views and listens per episode.

How many listens are you getting in the "views and listens"? Is it 1k+ views + listens in average? What is, say, the average watchtime per episode? What is the average view duration (in %)?

We're now at the point where we can convert money into faster audience growth using obvious low-hanging-fruit growth tactics.

What are these "obvious" low-hanging fruit growth tactics?

Plus, the topic of AI risk is growing increasingly mainstream. So I bet the potential audience who wants to consume my content about AI x-risk really is in the millions.

How did you end up with "in the millions" here?

The viewers-per-episode metric will soon hit tens of thousands

What data supports that? What do you mean by soon?

The most likely failure mode is if my content doesn't resonate with a large audience, making it hard to get beyond 25k+ views and listens per episode, such that I give up on the 250k+ views per episode which I currently think is a realistic long-term goal.

When will you decide whether you're in that failure mode or not? Why did you decide on 250k+ views episode as a long-term goal? What makes you think it is a "realistic long-term goal", and what do you mean by "long-term" here?

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Final note: I think Liron is doing hard work in the space and I think this has the potential to be turned into something impactful. The previous questions were simply to get more clarity on some of the numbers that were mentioned before, and the potential pitfalls I've mentioned in my reservations. I think Liron has proven to have the consistency and patience to hold these debates regularly, and I overall encourage the project, assuming some of the reservations I have are addressed in the future.

What progress have you made since your last update?

Main updates since I started the project
- March: published popular video: "2024: the age of AGI"
- April: edited some Ethan Perez interview
- April-May: I record & edit my AI therapist series
- May-June (daily uploads): I published 23 videos, including 8 paper walkthroughs, 4 animated explainers and one collab (highlight). More below.
- August: I record & edit an interview with Owain Evans (will be published in the next few days).

Detailed breakdown of the 23 videos from my daily uploads:

• paper walkthroughs

  • The Full Takeoff Model series (3 episodes)

  • Anthropic’s scaling monosemanticity

  • The case for ensuring powerful AI's are controlled

  • Safety Cases: How to Justify the Safety of Advanced AI Systems

• sleeper agent series

  • walkthrough of the sleeper agent paper

  • walkthrough of the sleeper agent update

  • four-part series on sleeper agents

• nathan labenz collab

  • one interview with nathan labenz from cognitive revolution (highlight)

  • full video includes a crosspost of nathan labenz’s episode with adam gleave

• other alignment videos

  • discussion of previous coding projects related i’ve made about alignment

  • mental health advice when working on ai risk

  • take on leopold’s situational awareness

• the AI therapist series (about AI's impact)

  • talked to an AI therapist every day for seven days (35m of edited footage)

  • compared using vapi.ai to hume.ai, claude opus to gpt-4o

What are your next steps?

August: In the next week or so I will be publishing an interview with Owain Evans.

September-?: I'm flying to San Francisco in to meet people working full-time on AI Safety, so I can have a better sense of what research to cover next with more paper walkthroughs, and schedule some interviews there in person.

After that, my main focus will be editing the recorded in-person interviews, recording paper walkthroughs, video explainers, remote interviews, and possibly some more video adapatations of fiction (like this one).

Is there anything others could help you with?

Any additional funding that goes into this grant will directly go into reimbursing my travel expenses in the Bay, and allow me to stay longer and record more in-person interviews.

I am happy to get connected with people to talk to (for an interview, or because they wrote an important paper I should cover).