Running PauseAI UK and doing my PhD in AI Safety at Oxford University.
Joseph Miller
Karma: 813
The closest thing we have to that right now is to join the WhatsApp community. If you aren’t in any of the chats, then you will just get occasional announcements in the announcements channel.
Thanks so much for writing this Michelle and for speaking with Anneliese Dodds!
If people want to get involved with PauseAI UK, they can sign up our website here, or subscribe to our events calendar.
Thanks! I’m happy with the traction we’ve got with politicians.
Yes we need to raise enough funding to be self-sustaining at around £100k/year starting at the end of this month.
Since that post went up, we’ve raised about £5k from generous individuals.
If you’re still fundraising I’d recommend a short comment in here.
Posted an updated there 🙏
PauseAI UK
Announcements:
In the past year PauseAI UK has delivered two conferences, written an open letter signed by 63 UK politicians, arranged a conference in the European Parliament, and co-organised the largest AI protest in the world. We now have a strong team, with Matilda da Rui joining as Deputy Director and several highly dedicated volunteers taking on substantial responsibility and launching their own local groups around the UK.
The total cost for all of PauseAI UK’s staff and activities is currently around £100k per year. To date, PauseAI Global has paid all of PauseAI UK’s staff costs and other expenses. However, PauseAI is adopting a federated model in which national chapters operate as distinct legal entities and raise funding independently. Global is able to fund PauseAI UK until the end of Q2 2026. At the time of writing we have no runway beyond this and we are actively seeking funding to help us stay afloat.
To see a detailed breakdown of our expenses and projected costs, take a look at our our Donor Prospectus. You can donate to PauseAI UK by visiting our donation page.
One Year of PauseAI UK
The next PauseAI UK protest will be (AFAIK) the first coalition protest between different AI activist groups, the main other group being Pull the Plug, a new organisation focused primarily on current AI harms. It will almost certainly be the largest protest focused exclusively on AI to date.
In my experience, the vast majority of people in AI safety are in favor of big-tent coalition protests on AI in theory. But when faced with the reality of working with other groups who don’t emphasize existential risk, they have misgivings. So I’m curious what people here will think of this.
Personally I’m excited about the protest and I’ve found the organizers of Pull the Plug to be very sincere and good to work with, but I’ve also set things up so that the brands of PauseAI UK and Pull the Plug remain clearly distinct so that our messaging remains clearly focused on the risks of future AI. For example, we have a separate signup page and we have our own demands focused on decelerating frontier development.
Simple summary of AI Safety laws
Net negative
None / Negligible
Net positive
Poll: What effect have protests calling for a pause / stop / deceleration on the development of AI had on the world?
a) Net positive
b) None / Negligible
c) Net negativeThis poll will be used to resolve this prediction market.
Vote by agree reacting to one of my comments below. Only vote once!
60 U.K. Lawmakers Accuse Google of Breaking AI Safety Pledge
FWIW I have personally said something close to “If I donate enough money to effective animal charities, I’ll save more animals than I would by going vegan. So, I don’t need to personally stop consuming animal products.”
And after reading this article, I still stand by that position.
See ai-plans.com
Announcing PauseCon, the PauseAI conference.
Three days of workshops, panels, and discussions, culminating in our biggest protest to date.
Twitter: https://x.com/PauseAI/status/1915773746725474581
Apply now: https://pausecon.org
PauseCon London 2025
<negativity>
This is cool, but the 10% Pledge is for life. If you’re primarily motivated by current events you may find it difficult to stick to your pledge 10 years from now.
</negativity>This is really great! Giving to charity is awesome and it’s especially impactful right now!
The next international PauseAI protest is taking place in one week in London, New York, Stockholm (Sunday 9th Feb), Paris (Mon 10 Feb) and many other cities around the world.
We are calling for AI Safety to be the focus of the upcoming Paris AI Action Summit. If you’re on the fence, take a look at Why I’m doing PauseAI.
Great point! Off the cuff I don’t think this massively changes considerations for PauseAI, but I’ll need to think about this.
Oops, I should have put the link earlier! Join the WhatsApp community here: https://chat.whatsapp.com/BesRzGOwnfNHuQM9fLIr0J
You’re invited when we manually decide to invite the attendees of a previous event that you attended to some new event. When we make a new local social event, we will generally just invite the people who have previously been to social events in that area.
If it is a bigger event, like a protest or the Parliament event, we will invite anyone who has every been to any PauseAI UK event.
Having said that, I’m actually not sure what happens when you click ‘Follow’ on our event calendar, so I’ve enquired about that.
The announcements channel on the WhatsApp community more or less serves this purpose, but I think it would probably be good for us to make another email channel that does this too.