“The Center for AI Policy Has Shut Down” by Tristan Williams

And the need for more AIS advocacy work

Executive Summary

The Center for AI Policy (CAIP) is no more. CAIP was an advocacy organization that worked to raise policymakers’ awareness of the catastrophic risks from AI and to promote ambitious legislative solutions. Such advocacy is necessary because good governance ideas don’t spread on their own, and to meaningfully reduce AI risk, they must reach the U.S. federal government.

Why did CAIP shut down? The reasons are mixed. Some were internal, such as hiring missteps. But others reflect the broader ecosystem: funders setting the bar for advocacy projects at an unreasonably high level, structural biases in the funding space that privilege research over advocacy. While CAIP's mistakes played a role, a full account also needs to reckon with these systemic factors.

I focus on CAIP, as I think it filled a particular niche and was impactful, but there are many [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) And the need for more AIS advocacy work

(00:15) Executive Summary

(02:25) Why Advocacy?

(07:27) What was CAIP up to?

(09:57) Was the Work Impactful?

(13:26) Why did CAIP Shut Down?

(13:58) CAIP's Failures

(15:38) Funders Have Set the Bar Too High for Advocacy

(18:17) Biases in the Funding Space

(20:30) What can we do?

(21:14) Donate Yourself

(24:01) Start an Organization

(26:33) In Conclusion

(27:03) Appendix

(27:07) A1: What is Advocacy?

(28:25) A2: Responses to General Opposition to Advocacy

(30:09) A3: AIS Grantmakers' Positions on AIS Advocacy

(31:42) A4: The Estimate of Funds Spent on AIS Advocacy

(33:00) A5: Donation Options in the AIS Advocacy Space

The original text contained 48 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 17th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Ed3naAyEEe7zZvzsj/the-center-for-ai-policy-has-shut-down

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.