Welcome to AI safety's mass movement era

For most of its history, AI safety has been a cozy professional circle: a tight-knit community of researchers, community-builders, and policy advocates in a few dozen organizations. But as AI becomes a national political issue, AI safety organizers are trying to meet the moment by expanding their outreach to the general public. 80,000 Hours has a YouTube channel with half a million subscribers, and MIRI’s Do Not Accept campaign asks people to add their names in protest to the ugly “terms and conditions” of AI development. The stakes of this mobilization are ramping up: a new Congress means new pushes for AI legislation, and civil-society organizing will grow around these efforts. This is broadly good! It was never ideal that AI safety was a niche concern, and it’s encouraging that organizers are reaching out to the general public to make them aware of AI risk. But AI safety’s culture is not equipped for the tradeoffs of a mass movement, and it remains to be seen whether this mobilization will be harnessed well. Early signs of mass movement outreachIt might seem premature to call this AI safety's mass movement era. Most of the time and energy in AI safety still comes from the same professional community that has carried it for years. Legislators and regulators are paying attention to the AI industry, but the general public is not yet feeling the salience of superintelligent AI. But I expect that to change. The early signs are visible in the anti-data center movement. There were 142 protests against data centers in July alone, and data centers were a cornerstone of Abdul El-Sayed's campaign. El-Sayed is now the most prominent elected official who made anti-AI policies central to his campaign, and he is likely the first of many. On the right, the conservative Humans First group called for a nationwide day of protest against data centers this summer. Of course, these protests were about water, jobs, electricity – not superintelligent AI. But they contain the seeds of an