PauseAI is a civic movement, which means that we help citizens organise to take collective actions and make their voice heard. Our volunteers engage with their MPs about AI safety, march in protests, join conferences about AI safety in the European and UK Parliaments and gather signatures for open letters.
PauseAI is focused on the risks of superhuman AI. This focus is the thing that is unique about PauseAI UK and distinguishes us from other movements in the UK.
Human extinction is at the top of our list of concerns around superhuman AI, but there are many others including:
- job loss and concentration of power
- autonomous weapons
- surveillance and authoritarianism
- human addiction, enfeeblement and psychosis
This focus is narrower than all possible concerns about AI in general. The advantage of having a very narrow focus is that is makes it easier for people with a wide range of beliefs to collaborate, because we don’t have to agree on everything. We just have to agree that superhuman AI is a big risk and that we should regulate, slow down and pause to ensure AI development is safe and equitable.
In PauseAI UK, we have a policy of not using AI art or AI writing on our website or any of our public materials. But we do use AI for coding and other tasks.
We collaborate closely with Pull the Plug, which is a group focused on the existing harms of AI. Our last protest was a joint event with them and our next protest will be too. When you come to a PauseAI / Pull the Plug protest, you can view yourself as a representative of one group in a coalition. Or you can see yourself as a supporter of all the AI issues represented by the coalition.
The hope is that when you go to a PauseAI event, you go in with the understanding:
- The focus is on superhuman AI.
- Anyone concerned about superhuman AI is welcome, including those who are even more concerned about the current harms of AI, or the climate, or any other issue.