Protesting at leading AI labs may be significantly more effective than most protests, even ignoring the object-level arguments for the importance of AI safety as a cause area. The impact per protester is likely unusually big, since early protests involve only a handful of people and impact probably scales sublinearly with size. And very early protests are unprecedented and hence more likely (for their size) to attract attention, shape future protests, and have other effects that boost their impact.
Off the top of my head, I think it could be especially useful to:
figure out how not to alienate the employees at these places (based on protesting different values, or using humour, and generally refining the message)
Refine a list of asks, other than just demanding a pause,
Evaluate whether the protests are even net useful in their current form, and
Figure out whether the protests are so small as to be ineffective, and if so, what to do about that.
Protesting at leading AI labs may be significantly more effective than most protests, even ignoring the object-level arguments for the importance of AI safety as a cause area. The impact per protester is likely unusually big, since early protests involve only a handful of people and impact probably scales sublinearly with size. And very early protests are unprecedented and hence more likely (for their size) to attract attention, shape future protests, and have other effects that boost their impact.
Off the top of my head, I think it could be especially useful to:
figure out how not to alienate the employees at these places (based on protesting different values, or using humour, and generally refining the message)
Refine a list of asks, other than just demanding a pause,
Evaluate whether the protests are even net useful in their current form, and
Figure out whether the protests are so small as to be ineffective, and if so, what to do about that.