Nonetheless, I think there are useful points here both about what concrete demands could look like, or who useful allies could be, and what more diversified tactics could look like. Certainly, a call for a morotorium is not necessarily the only thing that could be useful in pushing towards a pause. Also, I think you make a point that a ‘pause’ might not be the best message that people can rally behind, although I reject the opposition. I think, in a similar way to @charlieh943 that emphasising injustice may be one good message that can be rallied around. I also think a more general ‘this technology is dangerous and allowing companies to make it are dangerous’ may also be a useful rallying message, which I have argued for in the past https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Q4rg6vwbtPxXW6ECj/we-are-fighting-a-shared-battle-a-call-for-a-different
Gideon—nice comment. I agree that it’s quite tricky to identify specific phrases, messages, narratives, or policies that most people would rally around.
A big challenge is that in our hyper-partisan, polarized social media world, even apparently neutral-sounding concepts such as ‘injustice’ or ‘freedom’ get coded as left, or right, respectively.
So, the more generic message ‘this technology is dangerous’, or ‘this tech could hurt our kids’, might have broader appeal. (Although, even a mention of kids might get coded as leaning conservative, given the family values thing.)
It seems that the successful opposition to previous technologies was indeed explicitly against that technology, and so I’m not sure the softening of the message you suggest is actually necessarily a good idea. @charlieh943 recent case study into GM crops highlighted some of this (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6jxrzk99eEjsBxoMA/go-mobilize-lessons-from-gm-protests-for-pausing-ai—he suggests emphasising the injustice of the technology might be good); anti-SRM activists have been explictly against SRM (https://www.saamicouncil.net/news-archive/support-the-indigenous-voices-call-on-harvard-to-shut-down-the-scopex-project), anti-nuclear activists are explicitly against nuclear energy and many more. Essentially, I’m just unconvinced that ‘its bad politics’ is necessarily supported by case studies that are most relevant to AI.
Nonetheless, I think there are useful points here both about what concrete demands could look like, or who useful allies could be, and what more diversified tactics could look like. Certainly, a call for a morotorium is not necessarily the only thing that could be useful in pushing towards a pause. Also, I think you make a point that a ‘pause’ might not be the best message that people can rally behind, although I reject the opposition. I think, in a similar way to @charlieh943 that emphasising injustice may be one good message that can be rallied around. I also think a more general ‘this technology is dangerous and allowing companies to make it are dangerous’ may also be a useful rallying message, which I have argued for in the past https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Q4rg6vwbtPxXW6ECj/we-are-fighting-a-shared-battle-a-call-for-a-different
Gideon—nice comment. I agree that it’s quite tricky to identify specific phrases, messages, narratives, or policies that most people would rally around.
A big challenge is that in our hyper-partisan, polarized social media world, even apparently neutral-sounding concepts such as ‘injustice’ or ‘freedom’ get coded as left, or right, respectively.
So, the more generic message ‘this technology is dangerous’, or ‘this tech could hurt our kids’, might have broader appeal. (Although, even a mention of kids might get coded as leaning conservative, given the family values thing.)