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Take action

The group of people who are aware of AI risks is still small.

You are now one of them.

Your actions matter more than you think.

You can do this

If you …

If you are convincing

If you are a politician or work in government

  • Prepare for the AI safety summit . Form coalitions with other countries. Get informed about the problem and solutions .
  • Invite (or subpoena) AI lab leaders to parliamentary/congressional hearings to give their predictions and timelines of AI disasters.
  • Establish a committee to investigate the risks of AI .

If you know (international) law

If you can write web content

If you work in AI

  • Don’t work towards superintelligence. If you have some cool idea on how we can make AI systems 10x faster, please don’t build it / spread it / talk about it. We need to slow down AI development, not speed it up.
  • Talk to your management and colleagues about the risks. Get them to take an institutional position on this.
  • Hold a seminar on AI safety at your workplace. Check out the videos for inspiration.
  • Sign the Statement on AI Risk
    .

If you work on AI safety

If you are just starting out in AI Alignment, unless you are extremely skilled and/or have had significant new flashes of insight on the problem, consider switching to advocacy for the Pause. Without the Pause in place first, there just isn’t time to spin up a career in Alignment to the point of making useful contributions.

If you are already established in Alignment, consider more public communication

, and adding your name to calls for the Pause and regulation of the AI industry.

Tips for being effective

  • Be bold in your public communication of the danger. Don’t use hedging language or caveats by default; mention them when questioned, or in footnotes, but don’t make it sound like you aren’t that concerned if you are.
  • Be less exacting in your work. 80/20
    more. Don’t do the classic geek thing and spend months agonizing and iterating on your Google doc over endless rounds of feedback. Get your project out into the world and iterate as you go. Time is of the essence.

Consider this: all our other work may just be the equivalent of rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. We need to be running to the bridge, grabbing the wheel, and steering away from the iceberg. We may not have much time, but we can try. We can do this!