As we explained in our MIRI 2024 Mission and Strategy update, MIRI has pivoted to prioritize policy, communications, and technical governance research over technical alignment research. This follow-up post goes into detail about our communications strategy.

The Objective: Shut it Down[1]

Our objective is to convince major powers to shut down the development of frontier AI systems worldwide before it is too late. We believe that nothing less than this will prevent future misaligned smarter-than-human AI systems from destroying humanity. Persuading governments worldwide to take sufficiently drastic action will not be easy, but we believe this is the most viable path.

Policymakers deal mostly in compromise: they form coalitions by giving a little here to gain a little somewhere else. We are concerned that most legislation intended to keep humanity alive will go through the usual political processes and be ground down into ineffective compromises.

The only way we [...]

---

Outline:

(00:22) The Objective: Shut it Down

(02:00) Theory of Change

(02:33) Audience

(04:16) Message and Tone

(06:42) Channels

(08:25) Artifacts

(09:15) What We’re Not Doing

(10:39) Execution

(11:56) How to Help

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:

Source:

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.