PauseAI US advocates for an international treaty to pause frontier AI development. But we don't need to achieve that treaty to have positive impact-- most of our positive impact will likely come from moving the Overton window and making more moderate AI Safety measures more possible. Advocating straightforwardly for what we consider the best solution is an excellent frame for educating the general public and elected officials on AI danger-- we don't know what we're doing building powerful AI, so we should wait until we do to proceed-- compared to tortured and confusing discussions of other solutions like alignment that have no clear associated actions for those outside the technical field.

To fulfill our goal of moving the Overton window in the direction of simply not building AGI while it is dangerous to do so, PauseAI US has two major areas of programming: protesting and lobbying.

Protests are the core of our volunteer organizing, local social community, and social media presence. Protests send the general overarching message to Pause frontier AI training, in line with the PauseAI proposal. Sometimes protests take issue with the AI industry and take place at AGI company offices like Meta, OpenAI, or Anthropic while others may be in support of international cooperative efforts. Protests get media attention which communicates not only that the protestors want to Pause AI, but shows in a visceral and easily understood way the stakes of this problem, filling the bizarre missing mood surrounding AI danger ("If AI companies are doing something so dangerous, how come there aren't people in the streets?"). Protests are a highly neglected angle in the AI Safety fight. Ultimately, the impact of protests is in moving the Overton window for the public, which in turn affects what elected officials think and do.

Organizing Director Felix De Simone is based in DC and does direct lobbying on the Hill as well as connecting constituents to their representatives for grassroots lobbying. Felix holds regular email-writing and letter-writing workshops for the general public on the PauseAI US Discord (please join!) aimed at specific events, such as emailing and calling the California Assembly and Senate during the SB-1047 hearings and workshops coordinating supportive emails expressing hope about the possibility of a global treaty to pause frontier AI development. We work with SAG-AFTRA representatives to coordinate with their initiatives and add an x-risk dimension to their primarily digital identity and provenance-related concerns. 

PauseAI US is part of a number of other more speculative legal interventions to Pause AI, such as working with Gabriel Weil to develop a strict liability ballot initiative version of SB-1047 and locate funders to get it on the 2026 ballot. We are members of Coalition for a Baruch Plan for AI and Felix attended the UN Summit for the Future Activist Days. We hope to be able to serve as a plaintiff in lawsuits against AI companies that our attorney allies are developing, a role which very few others would be willing or able to fill. Lobbying is more of a nitty gritty approach, but the goal of our lobbying is the same as our protesting: to show our elected officials that cooperation to not build AGI is possible, because the will and the ways are there.

Your donation will support our small and deeply dedicated staff in building the systems to communicate across the nation, allowing us to support the growing grassroots movement in finding its voice and being heard. Your donation will help us Pause AI.