my_research/support_the_movement.html

2025-10-12

Support the movement against extinction risk due to AI

• Low effort
  • Like, share, subscribe to my content or people publishing similar content on AI extinction risk. Can share with your friends, people in media or politis, people working at AI labs or in x-risk, anyone really.
• High effort
  • Organise a protest in your city around AI extinction risk.
  • Start a social media channel to persuade people at scale about AI extinction risk. Even one video is better than zero, as it motivates other people to also come forward.
• Most impactful
  • Run for election with AI pause as an agenda.
    • (Requires large social media following or high status credentials, and a UK or US citizenship)
    • Use your social media channel to run referendums on the topic, as well as iteratively test messaging.
    • This is IMO the single largest bottleneck to growing the entire movement. Most people have very little time to devote to this issue and "Vote for Mr XYZ" is a better call-to-action than "Like/Share/Subscribe to Mr XYZ's content". Also you will get feedback from reality on how to translate vague public support into concrete actions in the real world.
    • (Maybe) Consider supporting UBI as an agenda, as one of the largest group of single-issue voters in US is only concerned with losing their own job/income/equity. Example: Andrew Yang (signed FLI pause letter).
  • Invent a new political ideology or system of governance that makes it safer to deploy superintelligent AI, human genetic engg, and whole brain emulation in this world. Invent a new spiritual ideology or religion that can unite humanity around a common position on superintelligent AI, human genetic engg, and whole brain emulation.
    • IMO superintelligent AI and human genetic engineering are both possibly less than 5 years away, unless people take political action otherwise. Whole brain emulation is seeing slow and steady progress, so maybe it is 30 years away.
  • Sponsor bounties for potential whistleblowers at top AI labs and their supporting govts.
    • (Requires atleast $100k, likely more)
  • Sponsor cyberattacks against top AI labs and their supporting govts, and publish leaked info publicly.
    • (Requires atleast $10M and some skill as a tech founder)
• Otherwise
  • If for some reason you are incapable of working on any of the above, my current recommendation is not do anything that gets in the way of the people working on the above.
  • You could work to make solar energy cheaper. You could fix politics in a country that doesn't have nukes. You could work on intra-city bullet trains to build a city with a billion people. You could work on alternative proteins or meal replacements. You could work on making games or art. You could work on some useless software project. Once an intelligence-enhancing tech is deployed on Earth, most of this will probably turn out useless anyway. (Weak opinion, unsure.) But until that date, someone might benefit from it.
  • I used to have an older list of many more projects, but I now think listing too many projects is a sign I lack clarity on what is most important.

Movement Strategy

• I think we need a core coalition of youtubers, journalists and politicians who can build influence in the US govt to counter the influence of bigtech and the influence of natsec that exists in US govt by default.
  • Different youtubers will target different demographics and that is fine. We can build a loose coalition between people who otherwise disagree on lots of matters. For instance a youtuber targeting leftist young urban americans and a youtuber targeting christian rural middle and old age americians can both feed into the same political campaign against ASI, even though they disagree eith each other on many other matters.
  • I think it is important for most youtubers, journalists and politicians to actually be talking about superintelligence though, not environment and job loss and whatnot. If tomorrow environmental or job loss concerns get addressed, that audience might flip their position, and it is important that they don't flip their position later.
  • I think all of the above can be done with integrity and honesty. I can ally with the christian youtuber and the leftist youtuber mentioned above without having to lie about my own position. I'm neither christian nor leftist for example.
• We also need a vast number of people spreading panic and fear.
  • Spreading emotions is way more important than spreading technical arguments, most people look at their social circle and their preferred thought leaders when deciding how to feel about things.
  • Only a few nerds (like me) care about technical arguments and even their biases are often very socially driven.
  • Many of these people may not do anything productive besides spreading emotions via like/share/subscribe. This is fine. A few people will be motivated to take the big next step and actually devote some years of their life fulltime to growing the movement. This is good.
  • Yes, spreading panic is increasing human suffering. This might even increase number of suicides. I support providing mental health resources to such people. I am fine with all this happening.

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