The role of natural scientists and hardware engineers in AI safety

A physical scientist argues that natural scientists and hardware engineers are largely absent from AI safety work despite well-funded calls for their involvement, and that their "atoms" perspective could contribute physical-world defenses, physics-based cryptography, ecological analogies, and defense-in-depth approaches modeled on nuclear plant safety and airplane cockpit design. He attributes the gap partly to a culture difference between bits and atoms disciplines, and asks why the AI safety system of discourse, research, and funding excludes atoms people.