I'm not sure what has caused me to be invited to the things I'm invited to
You're invited when we manually decide to invite the attendees of a previous event that you attended to some new event. When we make a new local social event, we will generally just invite the people who have previously been to social events in that area.
If it is a bigger event, like a protest or the Parliament event, we will invite anyone who has every been to any PauseAI UK event.
Having said that, I'm actually not sure what happens when you click 'Follow' on our event calendar, so I've enquired about that.
I wonder if it's worth setting up something that's easy to join that just tells people about the significant things
The announcements channel on the WhatsApp community more or less serves this purpose, but I think it would probably be good for us to make another email channel that does this too.
The closest thing we have to that right now is to join the WhatsApp community. If you aren't in any of the chats, then you will just get occasional announcements in the announcements channel.
In the past year PauseAI UK has delivered two conferences, written an open letter signed by 63 UK politicians, arranged a conference in the European Parliament, and co-organised the largest AI protest in the world. We now have a strong team, with Matilda da Rui joining as Deputy Director and several highly dedicated volunteers taking on substantial responsibility and launching their own local groups around the UK.
The total cost for all of PauseAI UK’s staff and activities is currently around £100k per year. To date, PauseAI Global has paid all of PauseAI UK’s staff costs and other expenses. However, PauseAI is adopting a federated model in which national chapters operate as distinct legal entities and raise funding independently. Global is able to fund PauseAI UK until the end of Q2 2026. At the time of writing we have no runway beyond this and we are actively seeking funding to help us stay afloat.
To see a detailed breakdown of our expenses and projected costs, take a look at our our Donor Prospectus. You can donate to PauseAI UK by visiting our donation page.
The next PauseAI UK protest will be (AFAIK) the first coalition protest between different AI activist groups, the main other group being Pull the Plug, a new organisation focused primarily on current AI harms. It will almost certainly be the largest protest focused exclusively on AI to date.
In my experience, the vast majority of people in AI safety are in favor of big-tent coalition protests on AI in theory. But when faced with the reality of working with other groups who don't emphasize existential risk, they have misgivings. So I'm curious what people here will think of this.
Personally I'm excited about the protest and I've found the organizers of Pull the Plug to be very sincere and good to work with, but I've also set things up so that the brands of PauseAI UK and Pull the Plug remain clearly distinct so that our messaging remains clearly focused on the risks of future AI. For example, we have a separate signup page and we have our own demands focused on decelerating frontier development.
Oops, I should have put the link earlier! Join the WhatsApp community here: https://chat.whatsapp.com/F0nj2RjLNeB1P1hyoDFsTz
You're invited when we manually decide to invite the attendees of a previous event that you attended to some new event. When we make a new local social event, we will generally just invite the people who have previously been to social events in that area.
If it is a bigger event, like a protest or the Parliament event, we will invite anyone who has every been to any PauseAI UK event.
Having said that, I'm actually not sure what happens when you click 'Follow' on our event calendar, so I've enquired about that.
The announcements channel on the WhatsApp community more or less serves this purpose, but I think it would probably be good for us to make another email channel that does this too.
The closest thing we have to that right now is to join the WhatsApp community. If you aren't in any of the chats, then you will just get occasional announcements in the announcements channel.
Thanks so much for writing this Michelle and for speaking with Anneliese Dodds!
If people want to get involved with PauseAI UK, they can sign up our website here, or subscribe to our events calendar.
Thanks! I'm happy with the traction we've got with politicians.
Yes we need to raise enough funding to be self-sustaining at around £100k/year starting at the end of this month.
Since that post went up, we've raised about £5k from generous individuals.
Posted an updated there 🙏
PauseAI UK
Announcements:
To see a detailed breakdown of our expenses and projected costs, take a look at our our Donor Prospectus. You can donate to PauseAI UK by visiting our donation page.
The next PauseAI UK protest will be (AFAIK) the first coalition protest between different AI activist groups, the main other group being Pull the Plug, a new organisation focused primarily on current AI harms. It will almost certainly be the largest protest focused exclusively on AI to date.
In my experience, the vast majority of people in AI safety are in favor of big-tent coalition protests on AI in theory. But when faced with the reality of working with other groups who don't emphasize existential risk, they have misgivings. So I'm curious what people here will think of this.
Personally I'm excited about the protest and I've found the organizers of Pull the Plug to be very sincere and good to work with, but I've also set things up so that the brands of PauseAI UK and Pull the Plug remain clearly distinct so that our messaging remains clearly focused on the risks of future AI. For example, we have a separate signup page and we have our own demands focused on decelerating frontier development.
Net negative
None / Negligible
Net positive
Poll: What effect have protests calling for a pause / stop / deceleration on the development of AI had on the world?
a) Net positive
b) None / Negligible
c) Net negative
This poll will be used to resolve this prediction market.
Vote by agree reacting to one of my comments below. Only vote once!