List of requests for an AI slowdown/​halt.

[Cleo Nardo]

About this document

There has been a recent flurry of letters/​articles/​statements/​videos which endorse a slowdown or halt of colossal AI experiments via (e.g.) regulation or coordination.

This document aspires to collect all examples into a single centralised list. I’m undecided on how best to order and subdivide the examples, but I’m open to suggestions.

As a disclaimer, this list is...

• Living — I’ll try to update the list over time.

• Non-exhaustive — There are almost certainly examples I’ve missed.

• Non-representative — The list is biased, at least initially, towards things that I have been shown personally.

Please mention in the comments any examples I’ve missed so I can add them!

List of slowdown/​halt AI requests

Last updated: April 14th 2023.

(Note that I’m also including surveys.)

• Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter
  by Future of Life Institute

• Pausing AI Developments Isn’t Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down
  by Eliezer Yudkowsky

• We must slow down the race to God-like AI
  by Ian Hogarth

• The A.I. Dilemma
  by the Center for Humane Technology

• The case for slowing down AI ^[1]
  by Sigal Samuel

• The Case for Halting AI Development
  by Max Tegmark, Lex Fridman

• Lennart Heim on Compute Governance
  by Lennart Heim, Future of Life Institute

• Let’s think about slowing down AI
  by KatjaGrace

• The 0.2 OOMs/​year target
  by Cleo Nardo

• AI Summer Harvest
  by Cleo Nardo

• Instead of technical research, more people should focus on buying time
  by Akash, Olivia Jimenez, Thomas Larsen

• Slowing down AI progress is an underexplored alignment strategy
  by Michael Huang

• Slowing Down AI: Rationales, Proposals, and Difficulties ^[1]
  by Simeon Campos, Henry Papadatos, Charles M

• What an actually pessimistic containment strategy looks like
  by lc

• In the Matter of OpenAI (FTC 2023) ^[1]
  by Center for AI and Digital Policy

• We need a Butlerian Jihad against AI ^[2]
  by Erik Hoel

• Dangers of AI and the End of Human Civilization
  by Eliezer Yudkowsky, Lex Fridman

• We’re All Gonna Die with Eliezer Yudkowsky
  by Eliezer Yudkowsky, Bankless

• The public supports regulating AI for safety
  by Zach Stein-Perlman

• New survey: 46% of Americans are concerned about extinction from AI; 69% support a six-month pause in AI development
  by Akash

1. ^

   Credit to Zach Stein-Perlman.

2. ^

   Credit to MM Maas.

[Zach Stein-Perlman]

Nice.

• https://​​www.vox.com/​​the-highlight/​​23621198/​​artificial-intelligence-chatgpt-openai-existential-risk-china-ai-safety-technology

• https://​​www.caidp.org/​​cases/​​openai/​​

• https://​​navigatingairisks.substack.com/​​p/​​slowing-down-ai-rationales-proposals

[Cleo Nardo]

Thanks, Zach!

[Connor Williams]

Nitpick: I believe you meant to say last updated Apr 14, not Mar 14.

[Cleo Nardo]

well-spotted😳

[MMMaas]

Nice, thanks for collating these!

Also perhaps relevant: https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​posts/​​pJuS5iGbazDDzXwJN/​​the-history-epistemology-and-strategy-of-technological

and somewhat older:
lc. ‘What an Actually Pessimistic Containment Strategy Looks Like’. LessWrong, 5 April 2022.https://​​www.lesswrong.com/​​posts/​​kipMvuaK3NALvFHc9/​​what-an-actually-pessimistic-containment-strategy-looks-like.
Hoel, Erik. ‘We Need a Butlerian Jihad against AI’. The Intrinsic Perspective (blog), 30 June 2021.https://​​erikhoel.substack.com/​​p/​​we-need-a-butlerian-jihad-against.

[Cleo Nardo]

Thanks! I’ve included Erik Hoel’s and lc’s essays.

Your article doesn’t actually call for AI slowdown/​pause/​restraint, as far as I can tell, and explicitly guards off that interpretation —

This analysis does not show that restraint for AGI is currently desirable; that it would be easy; that it would be a wise strategy (given its consequences); or that it is an optimal or competitive approach relative to other available AI governance strategies.

But if you’ve written anything which explicitly endorses AI restraint then I’ll include that in the list.