"We urgently need to practice before we can pause" by Nikola Jurkovic cover art

"We urgently need to practice before we can pause" by Nikola Jurkovic

"We urgently need to practice before we can pause" by Nikola Jurkovic

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Summary
 I've noticed two clusters of thought in how people expect a global AI pause to be shaped:

  1. Single-shot global pause: the global AI pause will be implemented suddenly, with little pacing precedent before it, and we will need to do a lot of research before it's implemented so that we can get it right the first time around.
  2. Incrementally-shaped global pause: the global AI pause will be implemented incrementally, with lots of pacing precedent before it, and we will improve the pause setup and get more parties to join in as we go.
An incrementally-shaped global pause is both more likely and more tractable than the single-shot global pause. This is largely because the third-party ecosystem needs practice building trust, technical competency, and general experience doing lower-scale assessments before a global pause can be competently pulled off.

I also think that the concept of a single-shot global pause is an unhelpful red herring that people often implicitly use to discredit the possibility of a global pause in general.

If a single-shot global pause is to happen, I think this would require substantial government buy-in, but it's hard to build that sort of buy-in without precedent of similar [...]

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Outline:

(01:49) The basic building block of an AI pause is trust

(03:18) We can practice building trust before the global pause

(04:57) We can improve procedures and technical competency with practice

(05:42) Pacing is not a scarce resource

(07:12) Concrete recommendations for third-party assessments

(08:34) Going from US-only pause to global pause will likely require hardware

(09:43) "Incrementally-shaped" does not mean slow

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First published:
November 6th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iMKAvHSWxSoDpBoi6/we-urgently-need-to-practice-before-we-can-pause

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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