PauseAI UK

In the summer of 2025, I was in the process of buying a flat and had gotten to the point of signing the mortgage documents. Looking at the monthly payments stretched across 30 years, I started thinking seriously about my future as a software engineer.

AI has changed my work dramatically over the last couple of years. Almost everything I did as a junior engineer when I started is now automated, and the job market reflects that. I realised that if I lost my job, finding another would be very hard. The AI available today can already do most of what I do, and it shows no sign of slowing down. Across a 30 year mortgage term, the odds of being able to consistently find work felt vanishingly small.

I had a breakdown. AI had shattered my belief in what the future would look like, a future of working, contributing, owning a home I could maybe one day start a family in. That future suddenly felt impossible, and AI had taken it from me.

I recognised I wasn't making the decision to buy with confidence, so I pulled out of the purchase. I started reading more about where AI was heading, and the conclusion felt unavoidable: a technology capable of displacing work at this scale poses a genuine threat to how society functions, and to humanity's survival. I felt lost, not knowing what I could do to help, until I found PauseAI.

In September of 2025, I lost my faith and began truly grappling with the idea of death for the first time. My interests turned toward extending youth and life for all humanity, especially for my loved ones and me, until I read If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies and realised AI could evolve to the point of causing human extinction before ageing would even become something I'd need to worry about. Unlike ageing, preventing extinction risk from AI has clear handholds that don't require years of scientific study to grasp. Volunteering for PauseAI helps me feel less afraid as I know my work is directly contributing to humanity's chances of survival.