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 are 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.
“In my experience, the vast majority of people in AI safety are in favor of big-tent coalition protests on AI in theory”
is this true? I think many people (myself included) are worried about conflationary alliances backfiring (as we see to some extent in the current admin)
I only have anecdata but I’ve talked to quite a few people and most people say it’s is a good idea to use the myriad of other concerns about AI as a force multiplier on shared policy goals.
I’ve talked to quite a few people and most people say it’s is a good idea to use the myriad of other concerns about AI as a force multiplier on shared policy goals.
Speaking only for myself, here: There’s room for many different approaches, and I generally want people to shoot the shots that they see on their own inside view, even if I think they’re wrong. But I wouldn’t generally endorse this strategy, at least without regard for the details of how the coalition is structured and what it’s doing.
I think our main problem is a communication problem of getting people to understand the situation with AI
that model capabilities are steadily increasing;
that the labs are aiming at literal superintelligence, no really, something more capable than any human alive, and then even better than that; that the labs are explicitly aiming to do an RSI, which looks increasingly likely to succeed;
that there is not a known science of reliably controlling or shaping the motivations of superhuman AIs.
that there are competitive pressures for all of the labs and all of the countries to beat their competitors, so slowing down or pausing requires international coordination.
These are slippery points to get across specifically because audiences tend to slip into visualizing something other than “actual strategic superintelligence”, that is automating science and technological progress and capable of strategically outmaneuvering adversaries—even when I talk with people from the labs, they often tend to gravitate to a fuzzier vision that has the form factor of the current AI chatbots / agents, but is much more competent.
Most of the time, I’m trying to land these points, despite the slipperiness, and talking about present-day harms that don’t have a through-line to the core alignment problems seem like more of a distraction than a help.
If we already had developed policies that would substantially improve the situation and were politically feasible, and we just needed to get a big enough coalition to get them implemented, I would feel differently.
But insofar as we have policies substantially help, they’re rather radical (on the order of “don’t allow private individuals to own more than 8 GPUs” and “negotiate with China for an international pause in frontier AI development”), and are only politically realistic if the stakeholders have a close-to-accurate picture of the situation.
We call on the UK government to fund binding Citizens’ Assemblies on AI and implement their decisions.
I think this would probably be a disaster, given how misinformed and unwise large parts of the broad public have been on many other scientific issues (e.g. vaccines, GMOs, nuclear power).
The rest of their views doesn’t inspire much confidence in their epistemics either:
Citizen assemblies often involve selecting a small number of delegates who are then informed about the all of the details of the issue in depth, including by expert testimonies, which the delegates have the affordance to do because they’re being paid for their time.
My understanding is that this works pretty well for coming to reasonable policy.
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 are 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.
is this true? I think many people (myself included) are worried about conflationary alliances backfiring (as we see to some extent in the current admin)
I only have anecdata but I’ve talked to quite a few people and most people say it’s is a good idea to use the myriad of other concerns about AI as a force multiplier on shared policy goals.
Speaking only for myself, here: There’s room for many different approaches, and I generally want people to shoot the shots that they see on their own inside view, even if I think they’re wrong. But I wouldn’t generally endorse this strategy, at least without regard for the details of how the coalition is structured and what it’s doing.
I think our main problem is a communication problem of getting people to understand the situation with AI
that model capabilities are steadily increasing;
that the labs are aiming at literal superintelligence, no really, something more capable than any human alive, and then even better than that; that the labs are explicitly aiming to do an RSI, which looks increasingly likely to succeed;
that there is not a known science of reliably controlling or shaping the motivations of superhuman AIs.
that there are competitive pressures for all of the labs and all of the countries to beat their competitors, so slowing down or pausing requires international coordination.
These are slippery points to get across specifically because audiences tend to slip into visualizing something other than “actual strategic superintelligence”, that is automating science and technological progress and capable of strategically outmaneuvering adversaries—even when I talk with people from the labs, they often tend to gravitate to a fuzzier vision that has the form factor of the current AI chatbots / agents, but is much more competent.
Most of the time, I’m trying to land these points, despite the slipperiness, and talking about present-day harms that don’t have a through-line to the core alignment problems seem like more of a distraction than a help.
If we already had developed policies that would substantially improve the situation and were politically feasible, and we just needed to get a big enough coalition to get them implemented, I would feel differently.
But insofar as we have policies substantially help, they’re rather radical (on the order of “don’t allow private individuals to own more than 8 GPUs” and “negotiate with China for an international pause in frontier AI development”), and are only politically realistic if the stakeholders have a close-to-accurate picture of the situation.
From https://pulltheplug.uk/:
I think this would probably be a disaster, given how misinformed and unwise large parts of the broad public have been on many other scientific issues (e.g. vaccines, GMOs, nuclear power).
The rest of their views doesn’t inspire much confidence in their epistemics either:
Citizen assemblies often involve selecting a small number of delegates who are then informed about the all of the details of the issue in depth, including by expert testimonies, which the delegates have the affordance to do because they’re being paid for their time.
My understanding is that this works pretty well for coming to reasonable policy.
Who’s behind Pull the Plug? I don’t see any details about it on their website.