“Pausing AI at human level seems harder than pausing ASAP” by MichaelDickens

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Recorded13 Jul 2026

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Cross-posted from my website. Some people think we should pause AI, but not now. They say we should wait until AI reaches human level, [1] because: It's not (catastrophically) dangerous until after then. Human-level AI will help us do safety research. Alternatively, other people (like me) think we should pause AI as soon as possible. Katja Grace wrote a nice concise case for pausing ASAP. I have something I'd like to add: pausing at human level seems harder than pausing ASAP. [2] Pausing ASAP sounds hard. It will be hard to get international coordination around an AI pause, and implementing a pause sounds hard even if we can agree to it in principle. But pausing ASAP still seems easier than pausing at human-level AI, for several reasons: Human-level AI is highly economically valuable, and therefore there is a great temptation to keep going. The monetary incentive to build increasingly-powerful AI will be intense, and industry lobbyists really won't want to pause AI development. It seems hard to pause when the economic incentive to continue is so great. If AI is smart enough to accelerate safety work, then [...] The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 13th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tC463N9mHcmimQ5dZ/pausing-ai-at-human-level-seems-harder-than-pausing-asap --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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