Meet the grassroots protest group that goes by the name Pause AI, a campaign working towards halting the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) due to the possibility that it could lead to human extinction. The group’s co-owner and 31-year-old Joep Meindertsma from Utrecht, Netherlands, worries about AI’s potential threat to humanity’s existence. Meindertsma became interested in AI a few years ago, but his concerns were heightened when Open AI released its fourth language model, GPT-4, in March of this year. Since then, he has observed AI’s rapid progress, causing pioneers and leaders in the industry to acknowledge the risk of AI potential extinction, including UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Industry pioneers say AI technology advancements are far more rapid than predicted.
In response to his anxiety, Meindertsma launched the protest group, gathering small crowds of supporters to organize demonstrations in Brussels, London, San Francisco, and Melbourne. The group has gathered a collection of followers, leading to discussions with both the Dutch Parliament and the European Commission. Meindertsma’s fears are seeping into society, impacting the younger generations preoccupied with climate change, contributing to the rise of AI anxiety. In YouGov’s recent survey, the proportion of people worried that AI is the cause of an apocalypse heightened sharply in the last year.
Meindertsma emphasizes the risk of societal collapse due to large-scale hacking, where AI is used to develop cyberweapons that render the entire internet inaccessible, leading to dire consequences for banking and food distribution services. Meindertsma fears Many billions (of people) I think will die, in a chaotic society of people fighting for necessities. Experts claim that such a scenario is unlikely to occur.
Although Meindertsma does not want AI development to be indefinitely canceled, he believes halting it temporarily is crucial to avoid potential future crises. His group is among other similar organizations who share similar fears about AI’s potential risks.
