The history of climate change activism seems like an obvious source to look for ideas. It’s a recent mass movement that has convinced a large part of the general public that something is at least a catastrophic or even an existential risk and put major pressure on governments worldwide. (Even though it probably won’t actually end civilization, many people believe that it will.)
Its failures also seem analogous to what the AI risk movement seems to be facing:
strong financial incentives to hope that there’s no problem
action against it having the potential to harm the quality of life of ordinary people (though in the case of novel AI, it’s less about losing things people already have and more about losing the potential for new improvements)
(sometimes accurate, sometimes not) accusations of fear-mongering and that the concerns are only an excuse for other kinds of social engineering people want to achieve anyway
overall a degree of collective action that falls significantly short of what the relevant experts believe necessary for stopping the current trajectory of things getting worse
The history of climate change activism seems like an obvious source to look for ideas. It’s a recent mass movement that has convinced a large part of the general public that something is at least a catastrophic or even an existential risk and put major pressure on governments worldwide. (Even though it probably won’t actually end civilization, many people believe that it will.)
Its failures also seem analogous to what the AI risk movement seems to be facing:
strong financial incentives to hope that there’s no problem
action against it having the potential to harm the quality of life of ordinary people (though in the case of novel AI, it’s less about losing things people already have and more about losing the potential for new improvements)
(sometimes accurate, sometimes not) accusations of fear-mongering and that the concerns are only an excuse for other kinds of social engineering people want to achieve anyway
overall a degree of collective action that falls significantly short of what the relevant experts believe necessary for stopping the current trajectory of things getting worse