Right on target. When ordinary people inform their lawmakers about the situation and pressure them to act, they tend to take action! My own state-level representative drafted an AI safety bill after I got one meeting with her, and I'm just some guy! These are scary times, and the vibes are now publicly shifting. It's time to demand a global moratorium on frontier AI development.
I'm encouraged to read your comment! The only progress I've made so far is leaving messages for my representative and senators. Do you have any advice for me on how I can be more effective at influencing my representatives? DM is great if you prefer.
My advice for building a relationship with your congressional offices:
- Join their newsletters.
- Attend their town hall events (which you should hear about through their newsletters). If applicable, submit questions online, and in person. Show up early to make it more likely that your in-person written question gets chosen. If you get to ask a question in front of everyone, first read and very briefly contextualize the 22-word CAIS Statement on AI Risk, or another such direct and shocking statement signed by leading experts.
- Find out who their main AI policy staffer is and get their email. (This can be done a variety of ways, including by asking over the phone, or asking a staffer at a town hall event.)
- Regularly email that staffer contact (once or twice a month) and send them news and information about AI risk that they might not have heard. Make yourself valuable to them and build that relationship.
- Try to get a meeting with the office of your representative or senators in your district. This may take a while / several tries.
- In all of this communication, it helps to stay politically neutral on everything other than AI.
The bill I mentioned (AZ HB 4098) was introduced shortly thereafter, and then immediately died in committee. Anything introduced next cycle likely won't take effect until 2028. In general, it may be a bit late in the game for state-level regulation, as the federal Congress and the White House are getting more involved. But it is definitely way easier to get ahold of your state reps than federal, and they still have some potential influence, so trying to get a meeting with them might still be worth your time. That can be a rewarding relationship to build in general, for civic engagement!
This is superb, thank you. I had no idea a rep would have an AI policy staffer. I've also been focusing on federal reps. But you're right about state reps. Thank you!
You're very welcome! Yeah, the smallest offices may only have general advisors. Most offices have tech policy advisors. Several have an AI policy advisor specifically, and some that are paying close attention even have more than one!
I really like and deeply agree with this post and with DIP, but also, it really pisses me off.
I started reading and thinking about ASI Alignment around 2013, and back then there was no chatgpt and telling laypeople you were concerned about AI leading to extinction often made them think you were actually insane, like, schizophrenic. The strength the spectre has in my heart is from the lived experience of trying to convince people I'm not insane. Of wondering if I really am insane.
For all I hate large AI companies for creating a dangerous AI capabilities race, I actually feel deep gratitude to them for making AI something that everyone wants to talk about. I hate how everyone talks about it as if it's a new thing that was just invented, but at least I can talk to people about it now.
And I have been working towards being a technical AI Alignment researcher for many years now. I think activities like DIP are greatly more important right now than any technical work, so much so that I ran PauseAI protests and outreach while stressed out of my mind finishing my BSc.
I want you to know how ridiculous of a change of career path "computer scientist" to "activist & policy maker" is. I do not think that is normal and I do not think that is a normal thing to ask of people. I agree with you that you should be asking that of people, and maybe my experience is rare enough that it doesn't make sense to talk about. Maybe most people are not involved with AI at a technical level and those that are really do not care about AI Alignment and Ord's precipice and the future of humanity.
I really am grateful for everything you are doing and for writing this post to direct attention to this problem, but all the same, reading this was quite aggravating for me.
Fwiw, I relate to your experience going down a similar path, albeit with less time in my career. I originally studied physics in university and wanted to work on technical / scientific research, and worked at Conjecture doing AI safety research. Upon being confronted with the fact technical solutions aren't the answer, I realized I needed to work on advocacy.
On the bright side of things, something I've enjoyed advocacy work – learning about how political action works, and applying a technical lens to optimizing it. There's a ton of low hanging fruit in this area!
Also, being someone who's clearly not your standard activist-type but who is so concerned by the state of things that you've pivoted to working on this is quite a strong angle to lean on.
The nice thing about short timelines is that while we don't have long to win, it won't be long until we do, at which point we can go back to whatever else we'd like, with a fascinating chapter about how we helped save humanity added to our stories :)
Love the DIP, and love this. There are admittedly a large-ish number of people I might prefer didn't directly try to do this, but for likable and professional people I definitely think this is the move.
(Rafe just mentioned your name the other day, wonder if it was in relation to this)
I need courage sometimes to break through the learned fear of social exclusion when talking about extinction risk, but I keep reminding myself that whenever I’ve done it it’s never gone badly.
Do you have a plan in mind for how to use a similar persuasion campaign for the US Congress? I do suspect it may be more of an uphill battle given the dominance of large AI companies’ money and influence here. But I think it could still have an impact.
Thanks for this! It convinced me to take a serious look at what I can do from Brazil.
This is an electoral year, and as such, it feels like exactly the kind of window where contacting elected representatives could actually make a difference.
We also have the PL 2338/2023 (our AI regulation bill) currently moving through Congress. It's a risk-based framework inspired by the EU AI Act, but it doesn't address extinction risks or superintelligence at all. That gap seems like precisely the kind of thing the DIP approach could help fill.
The landscape here is, of course, very different, especially given the lack of our own foundational AI companies. That said, I think raising awareness about these risks among lawmakers here, especially those who are already engaging with AI regulation, could be valuable for the broader global ecosystem.
I've been in the ControlAI Discord for some time and have been engaging with Microcommit (that's actually how I found this post), but I would also love to hear your take on the value of the effort here.
“ If reading this, your instinct is to retort “But that’s only valid in the UK” or “But signing a statement isn’t regulation”, pause a little”
I just don’t understand why ControlAI is focussing so much on the UK? If it’s the US companies who are building the superintelligence, and the US government who are opposing all AI regulation, why focus on the UK and not the US?
I'm encouraged to read about your success, as I have been personally coming to the same conclusions that you point out are mistaken. I started sharing your posts on my IG account and calling my reps in Nov 2025, but I heard nothing. My social network seems to respond only to issues like water use for data centers and the threats of the attachment economy, not to extinction risks. To be fair, I tagged ControlAI on IG and heard nothing from your org. I've been twisting myself in knots trying to imagine how I can do my part to help build political will to influence my reps. I've been looking for an org to support. But you're telling me that ControlAI going directly to reps is best. That sounds great. How can I get my reps to respond? They haven't yet.
We at Collective Action for Existential Safety (existentialsafety.org) endorse this. We have seen this pattern for many, many years. It is actively harmful for our collective safety efforts.
For some history, I was partly responsible for helping to bring AI safety awareness into the mainstream by launching Effective Altruism Global in 2015. That went reasonably well, but unfortunately this pattern you describe seemed to intensify shortly afterwards by other leaders in the space (against my suggestions). There was some justification for trying to keep risk awareness more "in-house", but it was ultimately the wrong move.
In terms of our recent history, we should all update our strategies based on what you've shown to be possible. Thank you for the badly needed inspiration.
I love the fact that you're raising awareness. I also want to inject a little pragmatism here by pointing at the elephant in the room: the incentive to build AGI is the strongest attractor in existence in the economic and geopolitical landscape right now. It's the capture of all of labor on the timescale of years, and multiplication of gross product by orders of magnitude by way of speed of labor and scientific advance. You cannot stop it (when is the last time humanity has coordinated on a problem of this complexity successfully?), you can barely slow it, your ultimate goal should be change the trajectory.
By all means, make this completely clear for as much as the population as possible what is happening and what the risks are. However, that is the instrumental goal. Redirecting capital and attention to safety research and infrastructure, and away from capabilities, in the interest of diverting the trajectory is the final goal.
I do not think the goal is only to make it clear what is happening and what the risks are.
It is also to make it clear what it would take to annihilate the extinction risks from ASI. Things like "International Agreements to immediately halt its development, stronger measures to postpone it in the near term future, and then building stronger institutions and safety research with the gained time."
Whether these measures are too expensive are then a choice that we can collectively make. There just needs to be an understanding of what are the different choices first.
---
For the record, I don't think "When is the last time Humanity has done [X]" is not a good framework to establish whether Humanity can do [X].
Most notably, it fails to predict literally all the new things that have happened or will happen, including AGI ("When's the last time AGI built a new form of intelligence that could entirely replace it?")
"International Agreements to immediately halt its development, stronger measures to postpone it in the near term future"
That simply isn't practical. Climate Change, Nuclear disarmament, Loss of biodiversity, COVID. Considering precedent is useful data because it gives you priors, and that's why the fact that humanity is consistently terrible at solving the coordination problems is relevant here. The short term costs to cooperate vs defect for individual actors are astronomically out of our favor.
"Most notably, it fails to predict literally all the new things that have happened or will happen, including AGI"
Stated otherwise, "we should start from agnostic priors". That's not reasonable when we have overwhelming evidence.
Please keep doing what you're doing, it's important work. But stay plugged into what the safety community is discovering, because building intelligent infrastructure that is antifragile with respect to the blow of ASI is where we're heading.
I found the Simple Pipeline and the claim you can just skip step 3 quite thought provoking, but honestly, the analysis related to 'The Spectre' felt quite sparse.
"Everyone keeps talking about extinction like it’s an inevitable technological fate. But what if extinction isn’t an AGI risk? What if it’s just a fear held by those who control the world today? I just published the other side of the coin: why AGI might actually be the end of human corruption.
I’m opening the floor for debate. Do you think we’re afraid of the technology, or are we afraid of losing control? Read my full argument here and share your take:
Right on target. When ordinary people inform their lawmakers about the situation and pressure them to act, they tend to take action! My own state-level representative drafted an AI safety bill after I got one meeting with her, and I'm just some guy! These are scary times, and the vibes are now publicly shifting. It's time to demand a global moratorium on frontier AI development.
That's awesome, great work contacting your lawmaker!
Could you share who the State rep is and the bill? In DM if you prefer.
I'll DM since the bill isn't publicly published yet.
I'm encouraged to read your comment! The only progress I've made so far is leaving messages for my representative and senators. Do you have any advice for me on how I can be more effective at influencing my representatives? DM is great if you prefer.
Sorry I'm late getting back to you!
My advice for building a relationship with your congressional offices:
- Join their newsletters.
- Attend their town hall events (which you should hear about through their newsletters). If applicable, submit questions online, and in person. Show up early to make it more likely that your in-person written question gets chosen. If you get to ask a question in front of everyone, first read and very briefly contextualize the 22-word CAIS Statement on AI Risk, or another such direct and shocking statement signed by leading experts.
- Find out who their main AI policy staffer is and get their email. (This can be done a variety of ways, including by asking over the phone, or asking a staffer at a town hall event.)
- Regularly email that staffer contact (once or twice a month) and send them news and information about AI risk that they might not have heard. Make yourself valuable to them and build that relationship.
- Try to get a meeting with the office of your representative or senators in your district. This may take a while / several tries.
- In all of this communication, it helps to stay politically neutral on everything other than AI.
The bill I mentioned (AZ HB 4098) was introduced shortly thereafter, and then immediately died in committee. Anything introduced next cycle likely won't take effect until 2028. In general, it may be a bit late in the game for state-level regulation, as the federal Congress and the White House are getting more involved. But it is definitely way easier to get ahold of your state reps than federal, and they still have some potential influence, so trying to get a meeting with them might still be worth your time. That can be a rewarding relationship to build in general, for civic engagement!
This is superb, thank you. I had no idea a rep would have an AI policy staffer. I've also been focusing on federal reps. But you're right about state reps. Thank you!
You're very welcome! Yeah, the smallest offices may only have general advisors. Most offices have tech policy advisors. Several have an AI policy advisor specifically, and some that are paying close attention even have more than one!
Incredibly helpful. Thank you!
I really like and deeply agree with this post and with DIP, but also, it really pisses me off.
I started reading and thinking about ASI Alignment around 2013, and back then there was no chatgpt and telling laypeople you were concerned about AI leading to extinction often made them think you were actually insane, like, schizophrenic. The strength the spectre has in my heart is from the lived experience of trying to convince people I'm not insane. Of wondering if I really am insane.
For all I hate large AI companies for creating a dangerous AI capabilities race, I actually feel deep gratitude to them for making AI something that everyone wants to talk about. I hate how everyone talks about it as if it's a new thing that was just invented, but at least I can talk to people about it now.
And I have been working towards being a technical AI Alignment researcher for many years now. I think activities like DIP are greatly more important right now than any technical work, so much so that I ran PauseAI protests and outreach while stressed out of my mind finishing my BSc.
I want you to know how ridiculous of a change of career path "computer scientist" to "activist & policy maker" is. I do not think that is normal and I do not think that is a normal thing to ask of people. I agree with you that you should be asking that of people, and maybe my experience is rare enough that it doesn't make sense to talk about. Maybe most people are not involved with AI at a technical level and those that are really do not care about AI Alignment and Ord's precipice and the future of humanity.
I really am grateful for everything you are doing and for writing this post to direct attention to this problem, but all the same, reading this was quite aggravating for me.
I don't have a thing to respond to your comment.
This is what you lived, how you felt and how you feel.
I just wanted to let you know that I acknowledge it, and to share my belief that in an ideal world, you would not have to go through to this.
Fwiw, I relate to your experience going down a similar path, albeit with less time in my career. I originally studied physics in university and wanted to work on technical / scientific research, and worked at Conjecture doing AI safety research. Upon being confronted with the fact technical solutions aren't the answer, I realized I needed to work on advocacy.
On the bright side of things, something I've enjoyed advocacy work – learning about how political action works, and applying a technical lens to optimizing it. There's a ton of low hanging fruit in this area!
Also, being someone who's clearly not your standard activist-type but who is so concerned by the state of things that you've pivoted to working on this is quite a strong angle to lean on.
The nice thing about short timelines is that while we don't have long to win, it won't be long until we do, at which point we can go back to whatever else we'd like, with a fascinating chapter about how we helped save humanity added to our stories :)
Love the DIP, and love this. There are admittedly a large-ish number of people I might prefer didn't directly try to do this, but for likable and professional people I definitely think this is the move.
(Rafe just mentioned your name the other day, wonder if it was in relation to this)
I need courage sometimes to break through the learned fear of social exclusion when talking about extinction risk, but I keep reminding myself that whenever I’ve done it it’s never gone badly.
This article gives me more courage too.
Do you have a plan in mind for how to use a similar persuasion campaign for the US Congress? I do suspect it may be more of an uphill battle given the dominance of large AI companies’ money and influence here. But I think it could still have an impact.
Thanks for this! It convinced me to take a serious look at what I can do from Brazil.
This is an electoral year, and as such, it feels like exactly the kind of window where contacting elected representatives could actually make a difference.
We also have the PL 2338/2023 (our AI regulation bill) currently moving through Congress. It's a risk-based framework inspired by the EU AI Act, but it doesn't address extinction risks or superintelligence at all. That gap seems like precisely the kind of thing the DIP approach could help fill.
The landscape here is, of course, very different, especially given the lack of our own foundational AI companies. That said, I think raising awareness about these risks among lawmakers here, especially those who are already engaging with AI regulation, could be valuable for the broader global ecosystem.
I've been in the ControlAI Discord for some time and have been engaging with Microcommit (that's actually how I found this post), but I would also love to hear your take on the value of the effort here.
Cheers!
“ If reading this, your instinct is to retort “But that’s only valid in the UK” or “But signing a statement isn’t regulation”, pause a little”
I just don’t understand why ControlAI is focussing so much on the UK? If it’s the US companies who are building the superintelligence, and the US government who are opposing all AI regulation, why focus on the UK and not the US?
I'm a layperson living in the U.S. What can I do?
I'm encouraged to read about your success, as I have been personally coming to the same conclusions that you point out are mistaken. I started sharing your posts on my IG account and calling my reps in Nov 2025, but I heard nothing. My social network seems to respond only to issues like water use for data centers and the threats of the attachment economy, not to extinction risks. To be fair, I tagged ControlAI on IG and heard nothing from your org. I've been twisting myself in knots trying to imagine how I can do my part to help build political will to influence my reps. I've been looking for an org to support. But you're telling me that ControlAI going directly to reps is best. That sounds great. How can I get my reps to respond? They haven't yet.
I would recommend checking out https://dip.torchbearer.community/
This should specifically address your problem, as well as provide you with community support for doing that!
Wonderful. Thank you, Gabe. I'll dive in.
We at Collective Action for Existential Safety (existentialsafety.org) endorse this. We have seen this pattern for many, many years. It is actively harmful for our collective safety efforts.
For some history, I was partly responsible for helping to bring AI safety awareness into the mainstream by launching Effective Altruism Global in 2015. That went reasonably well, but unfortunately this pattern you describe seemed to intensify shortly afterwards by other leaders in the space (against my suggestions). There was some justification for trying to keep risk awareness more "in-house", but it was ultimately the wrong move.
In terms of our recent history, we should all update our strategies based on what you've shown to be possible. Thank you for the badly needed inspiration.
I love the fact that you're raising awareness. I also want to inject a little pragmatism here by pointing at the elephant in the room: the incentive to build AGI is the strongest attractor in existence in the economic and geopolitical landscape right now. It's the capture of all of labor on the timescale of years, and multiplication of gross product by orders of magnitude by way of speed of labor and scientific advance. You cannot stop it (when is the last time humanity has coordinated on a problem of this complexity successfully?), you can barely slow it, your ultimate goal should be change the trajectory.
By all means, make this completely clear for as much as the population as possible what is happening and what the risks are. However, that is the instrumental goal. Redirecting capital and attention to safety research and infrastructure, and away from capabilities, in the interest of diverting the trajectory is the final goal.
I do not think the goal is only to make it clear what is happening and what the risks are.
It is also to make it clear what it would take to annihilate the extinction risks from ASI. Things like "International Agreements to immediately halt its development, stronger measures to postpone it in the near term future, and then building stronger institutions and safety research with the gained time."
Whether these measures are too expensive are then a choice that we can collectively make. There just needs to be an understanding of what are the different choices first.
---
For the record, I don't think "When is the last time Humanity has done [X]" is not a good framework to establish whether Humanity can do [X].
Most notably, it fails to predict literally all the new things that have happened or will happen, including AGI ("When's the last time AGI built a new form of intelligence that could entirely replace it?")
"International Agreements to immediately halt its development, stronger measures to postpone it in the near term future"
That simply isn't practical. Climate Change, Nuclear disarmament, Loss of biodiversity, COVID. Considering precedent is useful data because it gives you priors, and that's why the fact that humanity is consistently terrible at solving the coordination problems is relevant here. The short term costs to cooperate vs defect for individual actors are astronomically out of our favor.
"Most notably, it fails to predict literally all the new things that have happened or will happen, including AGI"
Stated otherwise, "we should start from agnostic priors". That's not reasonable when we have overwhelming evidence.
Please keep doing what you're doing, it's important work. But stay plugged into what the safety community is discovering, because building intelligent infrastructure that is antifragile with respect to the blow of ASI is where we're heading.
I found the Simple Pipeline and the claim you can just skip step 3 quite thought provoking, but honestly, the analysis related to 'The Spectre' felt quite sparse.
"Everyone keeps talking about extinction like it’s an inevitable technological fate. But what if extinction isn’t an AGI risk? What if it’s just a fear held by those who control the world today? I just published the other side of the coin: why AGI might actually be the end of human corruption.
I’m opening the floor for debate. Do you think we’re afraid of the technology, or are we afraid of losing control? Read my full argument here and share your take:
https://substack.com/@joserubenamadore/note/p-202664343?r=8md2xa