AMA: PauseAI US needs money! Ask founder/Exec Dir Holly Elmore anything for 11/19

1. Our lobbying is more “outside game” than the others in the space. Rather than getting our lobbying authority from prestige or expense, we get it from our grassroots support. Our message is simpler and clearer, pushing harder on the Overton window. (More on the radical flank effect here.) Our messages can complement more constrained lobbying from aligned inside gamers by making their asks seem more reasonable and safe, which is why us lobbying is not redundant with those other orgs but synergistic.

2. Felix has experience on climate campaigns and climate canvassing and was a leader in U Chicago EA. He's young, so he hasn't had many years of experience at anything, but he has the relevant kinds of experience that I wanted and is demonstrably excellent at educating, building bridges, and juggling a large network. He. has the tact and sensitivity you want in a role like this while also being very earnest. I'm very excited to nurture his talent and have him serve as the foundation for our lobbying program going forward.

Happy to weigh in here with some additional information/thoughts.

Before I started my current role at PauseAI US, I worked on statewide environmental campaigns. While these were predominantly grassroots (think volunteer management, canvassing, coalition-building etc.) they did have a lobbying component, and I met with statewide and federal offices to advance our policy proposals. My two most noteworthy successes were statewide campaigns in Massachusetts and California, where I met with a total of ~60 state Congressional offices and helped to persuade the legislatures of both states to pass our bills (clean energy legislation in MA; pollinator protection in CA) despite opposition from the fossil fuel and pesticide industries.

I have been in D.C. since August working on PauseAI US’ lobby efforts. So far, I have spoken to 16 Congressional offices — deliberately meeting with members of both parties, with a special focus on Congressmembers in relevant committees (i.e. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology; Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; House Bipartisan AI Task Force).

I plan to speak with another >50 offices over the next 6 months, as well as deepen relationships with offices I’ve already met. I also intend to host a series of Congressional briefings— on (1) AI existential risk, (2) Pausing as a solution, and (3) the importance and feasibility of international coordination— inviting dozens of Congressional staff to each briefing.

I do coordinate with a few other individuals from aligned AI policy groups, to share insights and gain feedback on messaging strategies.

Here are a few takeaways from my lobbying efforts so far, explaining why I believe PauseAI US lobbying is important:

1. This is low-hanging fruit. Many Congressional offices haven’t yet heard of loss-of-control and existential AI risks; when I bring these risks up, it is often the first time these offices have encountered them. This means that PauseAI US can play a foundational role in setting the narrative and having lots of leverage.
    
2. Offices are more receptive than one might expect to existential risk / loss-of-control scenarios, and even occasionally to the Pause solution.
   
   Framing and vocabulary matter a lot here — it’s important to find the best ways to make our arguments palatable to Congressional offices. This includes, for instance, framing a Pause as “pro-safe innovation” rather than generically “anti-innovation,” anticipating and addressing reasonable objections, making comparisons to how we regulate other technologies (i.e. aviation, nuclear power), and providing concrete risk scenarios that avoid excessive technical jargon.
    
3. It is crucially important to explain the feasibility and importance of international coordination on AI risk / an AI Treaty. A worrisome “default path” might be for the US to ramp up an AI arms race against China, leading to superintelligent AI before we are able to control it. In order to avoid this outcome, we need to convince US policymakers that (1) it doesn’t matter who builds superintelligence, we all lose; and (2) international coordination is feasible and tractable.
   
   As such, I spend a lot of time emphasizing loss-of-control scenarios, making the case that this technology should not be thought of as a “weapon” to be controlled by whichever country builds it first, but instead as a “doomsday device” that could end our world regardless of who builds it.
   
   I also make the case for the feasibility of an international pause, by appealing to historical precedent (i.e. nuclear non-proliferation agreements) and sharing information about verification and enforcement mechanisms (i.e. chip tracking, detecting large-scale training runs, on-chip reporting mechanisms.)

The final reason for the importance of PauseAI US lobbying is a counterfactual one: If we don’t lobby Congress, we risk ceding ground to other groups who push the “arms race” narrative and convince the US to go full-speed ahead on AGI development. By being in the halls of Congress and making the most persuasive case for a Pause, we are at the very least helping prevent the pendulum from swinging in the opposite direction.

One other thing I forgot to mention re: value-add. Some of the groups you mentioned (Center for AI Policy & Center for AI Safety; not sure about Palisade) are focused mostly on domestic AI regulation. PauseAI US is focused more on the international side of things, making the case for global coordination and an AI Treaty. In this sense, one of our main value-adds might be convincing members of Congress that international coordination on AI is both feasible and necessary to prevent catastrophic risk. This also serves to counter the "arms race" narrative ("the US needs to develop AGI first in order to beat China!") which risks sabotaging AI policy in the coming years.

(This was 1 Bitcoin btw. Austin helped me with the process of routing it to Manifund, allowing me to donate ~32% more, factoring in avoiding capital gains tax in the UK).

I've been impressed with both Holly and Pause AI US, and Joep and Pause AI Global, and intend to donate a similar amount to Pause AI Global.

Going to flag that a big chunk of the major funders and influencers in the EA/Longtermist community have personal investments in AGI companies, so this could be a factor in lack of funding for work aimed at slowing down AGI development. I think that as a community, we should be divesting (and investing in PauseAI instead!)

Since we passed the speculation round, we will receive feedback on the application, but haven't yet. I will share what I can here when I get it.

What does a Trump 2 admin mean for PauseAI US?

We are an avowedly bipartisan org and we stan the democratic process. Our messaging is strong because of its simplicity and appeal to what the people actually think and feel. But our next actions remain the same no matter who is in office: protest to share our message and lobby for the PauseAI proposal. We will revise our lobbying strategy based on who has what weight, as we would with any change of the guard, and different topics and misconceptions will likely dominate the education side of our work than before.

The likely emphasis on defense and natsec and China competition seems to make Pause lobbying harder

This is why it's all the more important that we be there.

The EA instinct is to do things that are high leverage and to quickly give up causes that are hard or involve tugging the rope against an opponent to find something easier (higher leverage). There is no substitute for doing the hard work of grassroots growth and lobbying here. There will be a fight for hearts and minds, conflicts between moneyed industry interests and the population at large, and shortcuts in that kind of work are called "astroturfing". Messaging getting harder is not a reason to leave-- it's a crucial reason to stay.

If grassroots protesting and lobbying were impossible, we would something else. But this is just what politics looks like, and AI Safety needs to be represented in politics. 

Yes, very much so. PauseAI US is a coalition of people who want to pause frontier AI training, for whatever reason they may have. This is the great strength of the Pause position— it’s simply the sensible next step when you don’t know what you’re doing playing with a powerful unknown, regardless of what your most salient feared outcome is. The problem is just how much could go wrong with AI (that we can and can’t predict), not only one particular set of risks, and Pause is one of the only general solutions.

Our community includes x-risk motivated people, artists who care about abuse of copyright and losing their jobs, SAG-AFTRA members whose primary issue is digital identity protection and digital provenance, diplomats whose chief concern is equality across the Global North and Global South, climate activists, anti-deepfake activists, and people who don’t want an AI Singularity to take away all meaningful human agency. My primary fear is x-risk, ditto most of the leadership across the PauseAIs, but I’m also very concerned about digital sentience and think that Pause is the only safe next step for their own good. Pause comfortably accommodates the gamut of AI risks.

And the Pause position accommodates this huge set of concerns without conflict. The silly feud between AI ethics and AI x-risk doesn’t make sense through the lens of Pause: both issues would be helped by not making even more powerful models before we know what we’re doing, so they aren’t competing. Similarly, with Pause, there’s no need to choose between near-term and long-term focus.

I would also be interested in your thoughts on @taoburga's push back here. (Tao, I think I have a higher credence than you that Pause advocacy is net positive, but I agree it is messy and non-obvious.)

I struggled with how to handle the 10% pledge when I first starting seeking donations. I did find it a little hinky to donate to my own org, but also kind of wrong to ask people for donations that end up funding other stuff, even though it’s 100% the employee’s business what they do with the salary they receive and that doesn’t change just because they do charitable work, etc.

But circumstances have made that decision for me as I’ve ended up donating a considerable amount of my salary to the org to get it through the early stages. Let’s just say I’m well ahead on my pledge!

1. I know bigger orgs like recurring for a few reasons (people likely give more total money this way, fundraising case is often is based on need so it’s good not to be holding all your future at once), but I think we are currently too small to prefer uncertain future money over a lump sum. Also, because we are fiscally sponsored until we get our own 501(c)(3) status, setting up systems for recurring donations is a bit hairy and we’ll just have to redo them in a few months. So, perhaps in the future we will prefer recurring, for now lump sum is great. If it’s easier for you to do recurring, we could set up a recurring Zelle transfer now.

2. Manifund is also our fiscal sponsor, so we would owe them 5% of our income anyway. In our case, it makes no difference financially, and the platform is more convenient.

The minimal PauseAI US is me making enough to live in the Bay Area. As long as I’m keeping the organization alive, much of the startup work will not be lost. Our 501(c)(3) and c4 status would come in in the next year, I’d continue to use the systems set up by me and Lee, and I’d be able to keep a low amount of programming going while fundraising. I intend to keep PauseAI US alive unless I absolutely can’t afford it or I became convinced I would never be able to effectively carry out our interventions.

Hmm, I wonder what we would bet on. There’s no official timeline or p(doom) of PauseAI, and our community is all over the map on that. Our case for you donating to pausing AI is not about exactly how imminently doom is upon us, but how much a grassroots movement would help in concentrating public sentiments and swaying crucial decisions by demanding safety and accountability.

My personal views on AI Doom (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LcJ7zoQWv3zDDYFmD/cutting-ai-safety-down-to-size) are not as doomy as Greg’s. I just still think this is the most important issue in the world at a lower chance of extinction or with a longer timelines, and that the crucial time to act is as soon as possible. I don’t think the timeline prediction is really the crux.

We are fiscally sponsored by Manifund and just waiting for the IRS to process our 501(c)(3) application (which could still take several more months). So, for the donor it's all the same-- we have 501(c)(3) status via Manifund, and in exchange we give 5% of our income to them. Sometimes these arrangements are meant to be indefinite, and the fiscal sponsor does a lot of administration and handles the taxes and bookkeeping. PauseAI US has its own bookkeeper and tax preparer and we will end the fiscal sponsor relationship as soon as the IRS grants us our own 501(c)(3) status. 

Additionally, we've applied for 501(c)(4) status for PauseAI US Action Fund, which will likely take even longer. Because Manifund (and PauseAI US, in our c3 application) have an election h, we are able to do lobbying as a c3 as long as it doesn't exceed ~20% (actual formula is more complicated) of our expenditures, so we probably will not need the c4 for the lobbying money for a while, but the structure is being set up now so we can raise unrestricted lobbying money.