Noah C Wilson | Noah.C.Wilson1993@gmail.com

Key Takeaways:

Building a massive mainstream global movement is essential to achieving safe AGI.
AI outreach has become the most urgent cause in AI safety due to accelerating timelines. AI outreach remains underemphasized compared to technical AI safety research.
A pilot study I conducted found that influencing AI risk sentiment is highly tractable. I used snapshot explainer interventions to successfully influence the concern about AI risks and support for AI regulation in a sample of 100 participants.
This study also investigates more and less effective means of influencing this sentiment.

What is AI Outreach?

AI outreach is the process of informing and engaging the general public about the risks posed by artificial intelligence, with the goal of growing the AI safety movement to foster an informed and cautious societal response. This includes conveying catastrophic concerns in an accessible way, countering misconceptions, storytelling, media engagement, and cultural interventions that reshape how AI is perceived and discussed.

Why Do AI Outreach? I.T.N. Framework

AI Outreach is Important

When we look at history, the most significant societal shifts—especially in response to existential risks—didn’t happen because a few experts had quiet conversations behind closed doors. They happened because public sentiment changed, and in doing so, forced institutions to respond.

This pattern repeats across some of the most pressing challenges humanity has faced:

Nuclear Disarmament Movements – The fear of nuclear war was abstract to policymakers in the 1950s, but mass movements like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the Nuclear Freeze Movement turned it into a crisis the public cared about. Protests, advocacy, and cultural shifts (think: "Dr. Strangelove" and the Doomsday Clock) created real pressure that led to treaties like the Partial Test Ban Treaty (1963) and, later, the INF Treaty (1987). Governments moved because people demanded action. [1]
Climate Change Activism – The science on climate change was clear decades before governments acted meaningfully. What changed? Movements like Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, and the broader environmental movement shifted public perception. This, in turn, made climate action politically viable, leading to policies like the Paris Agreement

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