I attended an AI pause protest recently and thought I’d write up what my experience was like for people considering going to future ones. 

I hadn’t been to a protest ever before and didn’t know what to expect. I will probably attend more in the future.

Some things that happened:

• There were about 20ish people protesting. I arrived a bit after the protest had begun and it was very easy and quick to get oriented. It wasn’t awkward at all (and I’m normally pretty socially anxious and awkward). The organisers had flyers printed out to give away and there were some extra signs I could hold up.  
• I held up a sign for some of the protest and tried handing out flyers the rest of the time. I told people who passed by that we were talking about the danger from AI and if they’d like a flyer. Most of them declined but a substantial minority accepted the flyer. 
• I got the sense that a lot of people who picked up a flyer weren’t just doing it to be polite. For example, I had multiple people walking by mention to me that they agreed with the protest. A person in a group of friends who walked by looked at the flyer and mentioned to their friends that they thought it was cool someone was talking about this.
• There were also people who got flyers who misunderstood or didn’t really care for what we were talking about. For example, a mother pointed at the flyer and told her child “see, this is why you should spend less time on your phone.”
• I think giving out the flyers was a good thing overall. Some people seemed genuinely interested. Others, even those who rejected it, were pretty polite. Felt like a wholesome experience. If I had planned more for the protest, I think I would have liked to print my own flyers, I also considered adding contact details to the flyers in case people wanted to talk about the content. It would have been interesting to get a better sense of what people actually thought.
• During the protest, a person was using a megaphone to talk about AI risk and there were chants and a bit of singing at the end. I really liked the bit at the end, it felt a bit emotional for me in a good way and I gave away a large fraction of the flyers near the end when more people stopped by to see what was going on. 
• I overheard some people talk about wanting to debate us. I was sad I didn’t get the chance to properly talk to them (plausibly I could have started a conversation while they were waiting for the pedestrian crossing lights to turn green). I think at a future protest, I would like to have a “debate me” or “ask me questions” sign to be able to talk to people in more depth rather than just superficially. 
• It’s hard to give people a pitch for AI risk in a minute
• I feel more positive about AI pause advocacy after the protest, though I do feel uneasy because of not having total control of the pause AI website and the flyers. It still feels roughly close to my views though.
• I liked that there were a variety of signs at the protest, representing a wider spectrum of views than just the most doomy ones. Something about there being multiple people with whom I would probably disagree a lot with being there made it feel nicer. 
• Lots more people are worried about job loss than extinction and want to hear about that. The economist in me will not stop giving them an optimistic picture of AI and employment before telling them about extinction. This is hard to do when you only have a couple of minutes but it feels good being honest about my actual views. 

Things I wish I’d known in advance:

• It’s pretty fun talking to strangers! A person who was there briefly asked about AI risk, I suggested podcast episodes to him, and he invited me to a Halloween party. It was cool!
• I did have some control over when I was photographed and could choose to not be in photos that might be on Twitter if I didn’t feel comfortable with that yet.
• I could make my own signs or flyers that represented my views accurately (though it’s still good to have the signs not have many words)