Will Petillo, onboarding team lead at PauseAI, joins me to discuss the grassroots movement advocating for a pause on frontier AI model development. We explore PauseAI's strategy, talk about common misconceptions Will hears, and dig into how diverse perspectives still converge on the need to slow down AI development.

Will's Links

Personal blog on AI
His mindmap of the AI x-risk debate
Game demos
AI focused YouTube channel

(00:00) - Intro
(03:36) - What is PauseAI
(10:10) - Will Petillo's journey into AI safety advocacy
(21:13) - Understanding PauseAI
(31:35) - Pursuing a pause
(40:06) - Balancing advocacy in a complex world
(45:54) - Why a pause on frontier models?
(54:48) - Diverse perspectives within PauseAI
(59:55) - PauseAI misconceptions
(01:16:40) - Ongoing AI governance efforts (SB1047)
(01:28:52) - The role of incremental progress
(01:35:16) - Safety-washing and corporate responsibility
(01:37:23) - Lessons from environmentalism
(01:41:59) - Will's superlatives

Links

Related Kairos.fm Episodes

Into AI Safety episode with Dr. Igor Krawczuk
muckrAIkers episode on SB1047

Exclusionary Tendencies

Jacobin article - Elite Universities Gave Us Effective Altruism, the Dumbest Idea of the Century
SSIR article - The Elitist Philanthropy of So-Called Effective Altruism
Persuasion blogpost - The Problem with Effective Altruism
Dark Markets blogpost - What's So Bad About Rationalism?
FEE blogpost - What’s Wrong With the Rationality Community?

AI in Warfare

Master's Thesis - The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Computer Systems in the Army
International Journal of Intelligent Systems article - Artificial Intelligence in the Military: An Overview of the Capabilities, Applications, and Challenges
Preprint - Basic Research, Lethal Effects: Military AI Research Funding as Enlistment
AOAV Article - ‘Military Age Males’ in US Drone Strikes
The Conversation article - Gaza war: Israel using AI to identify human targets raising fears that innocents are being caught in the net
972 article - ‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza
IDF press release - The IDF's Use of Data Technologies in Intelligence Processing
Lieber Institute West Point article - Israel–Hamas 2024 Symposium
Verfassungsblog article - Gaza, Artificial Intelligence, and Kill Lists
RAND research report - Dr. Li Bicheng, or How China Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Social Media Manipulation
The Intercept article collection - The Drone Papers
AFIT faculty publication - On Large Language Models in National Security Applications
Nature article - Death by Metadata: The Bioinformationalisation of Life and the Transliteration of Algorithms to Flesh

Legislation

LegiScan page on SB1047
NY State Senate page on the RAISE Act
Congress page on the TAKE IT DOWN Act

The Gavernor

FastCompany article - Big Tech may be focusing its lobbying push on the California AI safety bill’s last stop: Gavin Newsom
POLITICO article - How California politics killed a nationally important AI bill
Newsom's veto message
Additional relevant lobbying documentation - [1], [2]
Jacobin article - With Newsom’s Veto, Big Tech Beats Democracy

Misc. Links

FLI Open Letter on an AI pause
Wikipedia article - Overton window
Daniel Smachtenburger YouTube video - An Introduction to the Metacrisis
VAISU website (looks broken as of 2025.06.19)
AI Impacts report - Why Did Environmentalism Become Partisan?