Holly Elmore
Executive Director of PauseAI US; organiser of protests calling for a global pause on frontier AI
PauseAI US
Other
Elmore leads the U.S. arm of PauseAI, a grassroots movement that pickets AI labs and lobbies legislators for a worldwide halt to training ever-more-powerful systems until they can be shown to be safe. She refuses to put a number on doom, arguing that uncertainty itself is the reason to stop.
Declines to give a number
Does not give a number: "I really don't know"; argues the default outcome of building systems we cannot verify as safe "is that it's probably not going to do some things that are incompatible with us" is unwarranted optimism (The Inside View, January 19, 2024).Source
On timing
Avoids precise timelines ("I really don't know what's realistic") but says "the pause should be as soon as possible" (January 2024).
SourceWhat they call for
- Indefinite global pause on training systems more powerful than current frontier
- International treaty and IAEA style AI safety agency
- Compute tracking and inspections
- Public protest and democratic pressure
In their own words
"I mean an indefinite global pause on the development of more advanced AI than we currently have." / "Stop training until it's safe. Stop developing capabilities until it's safe."
19 January 2024
PauseAI proposal: "a temporary pause on the training of the most powerful general AI systems" enforced by an international agency with GPU tracking and inspections.
2024