Activist groups are set to march in London this weekend in what’s expected to be the largest AI safety protest to date.
More than 100 people from a coalition of groups, including PauseAI UK and Pull the Plug, plan to gather outside OpenAI on Saturday and march through King’s Cross where many influential Artificial Intelligence companies, such as Google DeepMind, are based.
The protest’s aim is to urge the CEOs of major AI companies across the globe to publicly support a pause on the training of AI systems, allowing time for the establishment of safeguarding regulations.
Joseph Miller, Director of Pause AI UK, said: “We believe that AI is going to become extremely powerful on its current trajectory and, when it does become as intelligent or more intelligent than a human, it’s going to be extremely destabilising and dangerous.
“Every part of society needs to be prepared for this change before it happens and, more importantly, we need to understand how AI works from a scientific perspective in order to control an AI that is more intelligent than humans.”
Founded in the Netherlands in 2023 by Joep Meindertsma, PauseAI’s movement has spread globally, with volunteers and national chapters popping up across the world.
A former software engineer, Miller attended one of Pause AI UK’s first-ever protests back in 2023, where he recalls only five people showing up; the protest this Saturday is expected to have between 130 to 300 attendees.
He links the rise in support for PauseAI’s mission to the increase in AI’s capabilities, leading to more and more people becoming concerned.
Now a PhD student studying mechanistic interpretability at the University of Oxford, Miller believes AI-related deaths and suicides are foreshadowing what’s to come, and stressed that governments must not wait for a tragic AI incident for legislation to be made.
Getting AI CEOs to align on the need for a global AI pause is “step one” of PauseAI’s proposal.
The next step: a global pause and treaty containing measures in international safety, training and deployment.
The CEO of Google DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, has already said he would support an AI pause if there was “international collaboration”.
Although all having shared goals, the organisations in attendance on Saturday differ slightly in their perspectives.
Pull the Plug, an organisation campaigning for a government-funded Citizens’ Assembly on AI, said that while they are not against the technology, they are against it being solely controlled by big corporations.
A Pull the Plug spokesperson said: “People like us are the ones who get hurt when AI systems make mistakes, or when there’s job losses, or a huge economic crash.
“That’s why we think there should be a Citizen’s Assembly to say how AI will be used.
“Because otherwise, politicians and rich businesses will make our choices for us, and that’s a recipe for disaster.”
To find out more about the protest, visit this website.
Featured image by Growtika on Unsplash.
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