Why AI safety is losing the communications war

I'm wondering to what extent the way to go is less, well-coordinated communication channels (e.g. AI in Context, Species) vs getting many lower context people to make content (e.g. after taking some intro course)

100% spot on. I have a draft post I'd been meaning to share about this:

I received 9 AI-Safety related mails in my inbox this week. The average length is 2699 words, or about 10 pages of a Word document. Most of these are full of links to much longer articles for anyone who is serious about the topic. One includes a “very strong recommendation” to listen to a 6-hour Dwarkesh podcast. And this is the short-content stuff, not the in-depth predictions like AI 2027 and Europe 2031. The content is outstanding, thoughtful, thorough and deeply researched, and I absolutely would not change it. 

But in parallel to this we need to start creating sharp, CONCISE, messaging that will be read by the 99% of people who might only have a few minutes to learn about the topic and may not see why they should spend even that. These people vote too.

This requires a totally different skillset (that I do not have either). The vital soundbite. The one line, one data point that shocks people - delivered in isolation, not cluttered with caveats or even justification. 

We can learn from advertisers whose job is to communicate a complex idea in 30 seconds in an engaging way. There is a science and an art to this, and those of us who enjoy long, complex arguments usually do not even realise this, let alone possess it ... 

Or we can learn from our enemies. Donald Trump is a master of this - his statement that "Canada has been ripping us off for decades" is a great example. Even though we know he's a shameless liar, we're compelled to think about it - it engages us, it enables otherwise rational people to ask "but has Canada beeb screwing us all these years?" ... 

In the field of AI Safety, the statement "If anyone builds it, everybody dies!" was a great example. It could have changed the game. It was the kind of idea that got people's attention. 

But instead of doubling down and getting an active public debate on AI Safety on the front pages, we (the self-styled AI Safety community!!) killed all the momentum with our desire to be precise and calibrated and not to exaggerate. We watered it down. We said it wasn't as simple as that. We mentioned multiple scenarios, many of which turn out OK. We presented complex scenarios and analyses that served only to tell 99% of people that this was a very complex topic and probably not as worrying as it had seemed, and that they would never understand the arguments well enough. 

We have to choose. Engaging content tends to shock. It exaggerates. It oversimplifies. But it gets people thinking. We need to realise that this is a separate but necessary step to having the AI Safety discussion that the world needs to have.

Meanwhile Donald Trump invents a lie that has 60 million people believing they understand international tariffs, which he doesn't even understand himself. We re right, but he is a far more effective communicator. 

It sickens me to se this again and again - on the climate, on science, on AI, ... ; the good guys are right but the bad guys win the public debate because they are waaaaaaaay better at communicating to the general public. 

When IABIED came out, we needed everyone to be joining in the chorus that this was massively scary, that yes, it was likely we'd all die, that stopping AI was the single most urgent thing that humanity needed to do. We needed to make it go viral. Because that's how you get the topic into the public eye. That's how you get voters and influencers and even politicians engaged. Once we get the engagement, once everything from pausing AI to shutting down AI labs globally is in the Overton window, then we can start hedging a bit, sharing more complex ideas. Because then people will realise that they need to engage. 

But it's a 2-stage process. The first stage is to get Joe and Jane Public to get a visceral feeling that this is scary, that they need to do something about it. There are people out there who could do this, but almost all of them are being paid by the AI labs to reassure the public that there's nothing to worry about ...

Thanks so much for writing about this. I also strongly believe that there should be a lot more effort going in AI safety communications. 
I'd like to share a few things: 
1. My own recent project (just launched, also with an EA Forum post): telltheworld.io. I'm looking for all the feedback I can get, so it'd be great to get in touch or get warm intros with anyone in your network who could find this useful.
2. Another new AI safety comms project: https://commonsignals.org/
3. The Effective Communications WhatsApp group. If you're not already on it, you might want to join - lots of AI safety comms people there, which I believe share your same concerns. 

Thanks for writing this Eugene! Let's fix this together : ) 

Thank you for writing this post and I'm open to working with you or others on this problem.

I agree with you and Celia Ford that this industry mainly speaks to itself. The recent OpenAI "Summer Camp" influencer trip is one data point: it sparked a lot of discussion on social platforms specifically because the people invited weren't AI or safety experts, they were influencers with existing audiences.

On distribution: Steven Bartlett and Ezra Klein are two large platform outlets already doing this well, both reach large audiences and regularly cover AI safety on their podcasts. I'm also following Frame Fellowship's work, which could have a real impact on public outreach and on recruiting comms people into the ecosystem.

In general, we need more people doing this work. I'll get pushback for this, but I'd argue we need social media influencers as much as communications professionals: people doing short-form video, talking about AI safety on their own platforms. I'm hopeful Frame Fellowship and others are already moving on it and we will have more people talking about AI safety to the public in styles and language they can receive.

I haven't seen anyone ever writing in the forums with the general public as their target audience

Excellently put! The movement is growing slowly but surely. We have lots of work to do!

Please don't use LLMs like that. This style of writing is utterly abhorrent.

Rephrased: answered.
1- Communication style is too academic, not aimed at a general public: Many policy orgs are deliberately aiming at elites, or targeting specific decisionmakers. Others are indeed aimed at a general public, and doing pretty good at it (AI 2027 and Rational Animations are the biggest successes, but also Doom Debates or Futurologue are trying their best).
A lot of communication efforts are aimed at the AI safety community (e.g. 80kh podcasts, agent foundations posts) and perhaps you could argue that efforts are misprioritized, but then tell us how you would prefer to reallocate funding between these three targeting strategies.

2- Don't backtrack: You're simply saying to abandon epistemics and embrace the dark side of political campaigns, and well, you can promote that if you want, but this is not a novel insight or debate, and you don't engage with any of the arguments, so whatever.

3- Not enough money/scale: Almost all AI safety orgs for which I know how they function, are deliberately tracking and optimizing their impact per dollar. I don't know what else you want to say here. Redirect money from expensive EA-non-AI efforts like AMF towards AI safety?

Overall: Disappointing article. Please don't limit yourself to AI reasoning, it's shallow and obfuscated.