CONCEPT
Framework Before the Harm
Amodei's principle that governance structures for powerful technologies must be built prospectively — before the specific harms they are designed to prevent — because every technology in history has produced governance frameworks too late to prevent the damage earlier action could have mitigated.
'Framework before the harm' is Amodei's articulation of the principle that distinguishes the Responsible Scaling Policy from typical technology governance. The principle holds that governance structures must be built prospectively — before the harms they are designed to prevent — because every powerful technology in history has produced governance frameworks too late to prevent the damage earlier action could have mitigated. Nuclear energy arrived before the regulatory infrastructure required to govern it. The automobile arrived before traffic laws and seat belts. The internet arrived before privacy law. In each case, technology arrived first, consequences arrived second, and governance frameworks arrived third — too late to prevent the harms earlier governance could have mitigated.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The prospective approach requires a specific kind of discipline — the discipline of imagining risks that have not yet materialized and investing in measures to prevent them