PauseAI

Funding Level: Low

Some people say that those who believe we should pause AI would be better off staying quiet about it, rather than making everyone look foolish.

I disagree.

I don’t think pausing right now is a good idea. I think we should be working on the transparency, state capacity, technical ability and diplomatic groundwork to enable a pause in case we need one, but that it is too early to actually try to implement one.

But I do think that if you believe we should pause? Then you should say that we should pause. I very much appreciate people standing up, entering the arena and saying what they believe in, including quite often in my comments. Let the others mock all they want.

If you agree with Pause AI that the right move is to Pause AI, and you don’t have strong strategic disagreements with their approach, then you should likely be excited to fund this. If you disagree, you have better options.

Either way, they are doing what they, given their beliefs, should be doing.

Donate here, or reach out to joep@pauseai.info.

(PauseAI Global and PauseAI US share the same mission and used to be part of the same org, so most of my comments on PauseAI Global also apply to PauseAI US.)

From Manifund:

PauseAI is a grassroots community of volunteers which aim to inform the public and politicians about the risks from superhuman AI and urge them to work towards an international treaty that prevents the most dangerous AI systems from being developed.

PauseAI is largely organised through local communities which take actions to spread awareness such as letter writing workshops, peaceful protests, flyering and giving presentations.

Historically, I’ve been skeptical of public protests. I think people mainly protest because it’s fun and it makes them feel like they’re contributing, not because it actually helps. But PauseAI has been appropriately thoughtful (1, 2) about whether and when protests work, and it makes a reasonable case that protesting can be effective.

(See also the Protest Outcomes report by Social Change Lab. The evidence for the effectiveness of protests is a bit stronger than I expected.)

I’m skeptical of the evidence because I don’t trust sociology research (it has approximately the worst replication record of any field). But I like PauseAI because:

• Approximately zero percent of AI dollars go to AI safety, but approximately zero percent of AI safety dollars go to public advocacy.
• Polls suggest that there’s widespread public support for pausing AI, and PauseAI has a good shot at converting that public support into policy change.
• The people running PauseAI seem to have a good idea of what they’re doing, and it’s apparent that they are seriously concerned about existential risk (for most AI policy orgs, I can’t tell whether they care).
• My impression is that the PauseAI founders went through a similar reasoning process as I did, and concluded that public advocacy was the most promising approach.
• I’ve listened to interviews and read articles by leaders from a number of AI policy orgs, and I like the vibes of the PauseAI leaders the best. Many people working in AI safety have missing moods, but the PauseAI people do not. I don’t put too much weight on vibes, but they still get nonzero weight.

Broadly speaking, I’m a little more optimistic about advocacy toward policy-makers than advocacy toward the public, simply because it’s more targeted. But PauseAI is still a top candidate because its approach is exceptionally neglected.

PauseAI Global has no full-time employees; it focuses on supporting volunteers who run protests.