Progress & pace · Policy position
Pausing frontier AI
Catalogued:
What it means
A family of proposals to temporarily restrict training or deployment of especially capable general-purpose systems while safeguards and governance develop. PauseAI is an advocacy organization with its own proposal; it is not a synonym for every person worried about AI, nor a call to ban every present-day AI application.
The strongest case
When potential harms are large and difficult to reverse, buying time for evaluation and coordination can be rational. Supporters argue that competitive pressure makes voluntary caution unreliable.
The difficult part
Proposals must specify a threshold, verification, enforcement and conditions for resuming. Restrictions may entrench existing firms or move activity elsewhere. Disagreement concerns both the scale of risk and whether a pause would improve the situation.
Sources & further reading
Sources support the factual context. The jokes are our responsibility.