PauseAI
In plain wordsA volunteer protest movement, begun in 2023, that pickets AI companies and lobbies governments for a worldwide treaty halting work on AI more advanced than today's best until it is proven safe.
An international grassroots movement demanding a verifiable global treaty that would halt the training of AI systems beyond the current frontier until their safety can be demonstrated and the public has a democratic say over them. It organizes protests outside AI companies and government buildings, often coordinated across cities around events such as the international AI safety summitsAI Safety Summit, prop. n.: A series of international meetings of governments, AI companies and researchers, begun in England in 2023, to agree on how to handle the risks and benefits of the most advanced AI.; lobbies for an international treaty; and runs volunteer chapters in many countries, with a separately incorporated PauseAI US. It is the most visible street-level expression of the AI pauseAI pause, n.: A proposed halt, temporary or indefinite, on building AI systems more powerful than today's, to give safety research and regulation time to catch up. position and of public concern about existential riskexistential risk, n.: A danger that could end humanity, or shut it out of a good future forever. Some experts count advanced AI among the largest such risks; others think this worry is overblown.; critics argue that a pause would be unenforceable or would hand the lead to less careful developers.
Origin
Founded in May 2023 in the Netherlands by software entrepreneur Joep Meindertsma, two months after the Future of Life Institute's Pause Giant AI ExperimentsPause Giant AI Experiments, prop. n.: A 2023 open letter, signed by tens of thousands of people including prominent technologists, that asked AI labs to halt the training of any AI more capable than GPT-4 for at least half a year. letter; it held its first protests that year.
Related
- AI pauseAI pause, n.: A proposed halt, temporary or indefinite, on building AI systems more powerful than today's, to give safety research and regulation time to catch up.
- Pause Giant AI ExperimentsPause Giant AI Experiments, prop. n.: A 2023 open letter, signed by tens of thousands of people including prominent technologists, that asked AI labs to halt the training of any AI more capable than GPT-4 for at least half a year.
- existential riskexistential risk, n.: A danger that could end humanity, or shut it out of a good future forever. Some experts count advanced AI among the largest such risks; others think this worry is overblown.
- Future of Life InstituteFuture of Life Institute, prop. n.: An advocacy group that warns about the dangers of advanced AI and other powerful technologies, funds research and lobbies governments. It organized the 2023 open letter calling for a pause on giant AI experiments.
- doomerdoomer, n.: Someone who believes advanced AI is likely to cause a catastrophe, possibly human extinction; often used as a put-down by people who think those fears are exaggerated.
- Machine Intelligence Research InstituteMachine Intelligence Research Institute, prop. n.: A small nonprofit in Berkeley, California, among the first to warn that smarter-than-human AI could destroy humanity, which now campaigns for a worldwide halt to building it.