PauseAI•10mo ago

AI Safety Camp Growing PauseAI project

I'm participating in the Growing PauseAI project for AI Safety Camp (project description) and I've been asked to share updates of it on here, so here it goes.

Google Docs

Growing PauseAI AIS Camp [initial project description]

Growing PauseAI Summary This project focuses on creating internal and external guides for PauseAI to increase active membership. The outputs will be used by the team of volunteers with high context and engagement, including the key decision makers. Activism and advocacy has historically been ...

sacred-roseOP•3/5/25, 4:59 AM

"Subprojects"

We've worked trying to answer 2 general questions about how social movements have grown and react to external events effectively in the past, but we have kind of paused that research, as, IMO, there wasn't enough of an idea of what specific outputs/ questions we wanted to answer. I could be wrong tho, I couldn't attend the last 2 meetings about this subproject.I, and maybe other members of the project, will share conclusions that came out from particular movements that were researched.
As a side project, one of our members is leading the crafting of a survey to understand the internal perception of the movement and where we can improve.

3.
After some more direction from the leadership, we're about to start researching and compiling key universities and unions located in priority countries for our growth. With the intention of sharing it with national leaders as priority targets where to try to recruit new PauseAI members and create alliances.

sacred-roseOP•3/5/25, 5:02 AM

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For 1, these are some of my notes about BLM that we may share in the future in a formalized manner:

sacred-roseOP•3/5/25, 5:03 AM

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BLM had hundreds of protests monthly for years and only local outcomes. There is clearly a lot more than growth to have an actual impact. I’m not sure about the details of the 3.5% rule and what BLM wanted federally, but the estimations of how many people they mobilize are between 4% and 8% of the US population. 6, 17

Looking at the longitudinal data, except for the data about the number of protests, that could have been about other civil rights movements (as that is the thing that is indicated in blue), every other peak can be explained by some specific events, and almost fully by the killing of George Floyd.

Based on the data that I found, I cannot find a clear order of growth between different aspects of the movement. Social media, press coverage, protests, and positive sentiment all reacted quite quickly to George Floyd’s death.

It is important to notice that nothing came close to the reaction of the killing of George Floyd in most of the graphs, not even previous videos of other policemen killing black men with doubtful justifications that were also recorded and uploaded on the internet. It’s not clear, then, what the difference was between George Floyd’s case and the other ones, but it could be attributed to being the clearest unjust killing (in the video), previous build-up, or a lot of other factors I’m sure.

The second most viral event was the killing of 5 policemen by Micah Xavier Johnson, who was protesting against the unjust killing of black men by policemen. People tried to tie it to BLM, although police said they didn’t find close ties with protesters and he probably acted on his own. BLM leaders condemned the shooting.

Positive support of BLM fell under the original state quite quickly after George Floyd’s protests, probably because of misinformation about how violent the protests were between conservative people (6, 16).

To increase the chances of an external event being recognized as a warning for most people, it seems important to try to get video evidence of the event, that shows the injustice that it brings, and try to spread it all over social media and traditional media.

Media engagement was the thing that fell off the quickest. People outside the movement probably lost interest quite rapidly.

The +100M USD in funding that BLM got didn’t seem to have helped the movement to stay popular for a long time. 6

sacred-roseOP•4/4/25, 3:11 AM

There are some outputs from members which I stopped being in touch with so I haven't asked them if they are ok with making the docs public, but Ilke has done that and produce this document full with recommendations for PAI 5 weeks ago https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K9XRvYP-L41dB2VGLVQejh6GDPEgI7y8MrASY4brEL8/edit?tab=t.7xh67e1gw8zv

Google Docs

(Ilke) Proposols - 21.02.25

Common Scaling Patterns in Successful Movements 1. Triggering Events: The Catalyst for Growth All movements had a clear triggering event that sparked widespread outrage: BLM → George Floyd’s killing (2020) and previous police violence cases. MeToo → Harvey Weinstein scandal (2017) + high-profile ...

AI Safety Camp Growing PauseAI project

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