Doing my best to prevent an AGI catastrophe.
Maxime Fournes
Karma: 108
Maxime Fournes’s Quick takes
Existential AI safety needs an effective social movement. PauseAI is building it.
Hi Madeleine, PauseAI might be a useful example for your list, @Toby Tremlett🔹 already flagged it above.
On whether it’s an “EA organisation” (to @david_reinstein’s question on Toby’s thread): it isn’t, but it shares most of the values and collaborates closely with both the EA and broader AI safety ecosystems, and that collaboration is central to our theory of change. We’re squarely a movement-building / constituency-building org of the kind you’re describing: our bet is on building an organised public constituency that creates the political conditions for governance of frontier AI.
On your two axes, we sit at the far upstream, low-measurability corner. I’ll be candid that converting movement activity into attributable political outcomes is hard to measure, but it’s something we’re actively trying to get better at. We’ve got a longer write-up of our ToC coming soon and I’m happy to share it when it’s up.
I would be curious to know if your beliefs have been updated in light of the recent developments?
Can Biden’s executive order be considered a win?
Crunch Time is Now. Drop Everything.
Epistemic status: Hopeful, stressed, terrified, ecstatic.
tl;dr This could be it. For the next few days, do nothing but contact journalists and policymakers (ideally via existing orgs), attend/share/organise protests near you, and use your public profile to speak out.
This is Our Chance
The explosion of interest in AI safety over the last week has been both inspiring and dizzyingly fast. We might actually win this thing.
Events since the Jacob Coxon resignation have blown the Overton window as wide open as it is likely to get. This is the kind of chance we have dreamed of, and we have a responsibility not to waste it. We may not get another.
What You Can Do
This window will not last forever. We need to act over a matter of days, not weeks or months.
This is the time to call in favours, work overtime, and put all your strength of heart and brain into keeping our world safe.
If you work in AI safety, we think the most impactful thing for you to do is to drop everything you are doing and pour your energy into policy and media outreach.
Politicians and journalists want to be able to speak on this issue but are keenly aware of their lack of technical knowledge. Cold-emailing and cold-calling them and offering to brief them has a surprisingly high likelihood of success.
This especially includes conservative ones. We don’t care what your personal politics are, survival is a non-partisan issue.
There are many ways in which people of all skillsets and levels of experience can contribute, but we suggest three key actions:
Contact journalists and members of congress/parliament, This is best done by volunteering for an existing organisation. We are capacity constrained and need your help. You do not need to be an expert: there are plenty of jobs that need doing.
PauseAI Global
People for a Pause
ControlAI
Humans in Control
Humans First
Evitable
Any other group you have a line into
Share and attend protests in your area and invite your friends and family. For instance:
This PauseAI protest in London
This People for a Pause protest in DC
Occupy OpenAI (in San Francisco and New York)
This PauseAI protest in Berlin
Speak out: Twitter, Instagram, wherever. Be grounded in facts, but also convey the right mood. Also, we’re in the Overton window—speak accordingly.
We need to put out clear, actionable asks for policymakers to translate this momentum into real solutions. We suggest:
US—The people really want Donald Trump to negotiate a pause treaty with Xi Jinping and he might get a Nobel Peace Prize if he makes the deal. National security depends on it.
UK—Andy Burnham needs to announce that the UK will convene a pause treaty summit and thereby protect its citizens and honour its legacy of global influence and world-leading safety talent (e.g. Bletchley Park Summit, UK AISI).
Elsewhere—Every government can act within their own borders and put pressure on the US government to get on board. We cannot let unaccountable US tech giants put us all at risk.
Good Luck and Godspeed
For the first time in a very long time, we actually think things might go well for humanity. Whether that happens is up to us.
See you on the other side.