# "Existential AI safety needs an effective social movement. PauseAI is building it" by Maxime Fournes, Espedair Street

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/lesswrong-curated-popular-5643401/existential-ai-safety-needs-an-effective-social-movement-pauseai-is-building-it-by-maxime-fournes-espedair-street
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/lesswrong-curated-popular-5643401/existential-ai-safety-needs-an-effective-social-movement-pauseai-is-building-it-by-maxime-fournes-espedair-street.md
Podcast: [LessWrong (Curated & Popular)](https://stenobird.com/podcast/lesswrong-curated-popular-5643401)
Published: 2026-06-27T18:30:40+00:00
Episode link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2037297/episodes/19411059-existential-ai-safety-needs-an-effective-social-movement-pauseai-is-building-it-by-maxime-fournes-espedair-street.mp3
Audio file: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2037297/episodes/19411059-existential-ai-safety-needs-an-effective-social-movement-pauseai-is-building-it-by-maxime-fournes-espedair-street.mp3
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Duration seconds: 3764

## Resource

Note: this post is about PauseAI, not PauseAI US, which is a distinct entity with a different leadership team and approach. This post was written by Matilda da Rui and Maxime Fournes, with significant contributions from Benjamin Schmidt (PauseAI Germany co-lead). Executive Summary The existential AI safety community needs to take building a civic and social movement seriously as a core intervention. We believe this is a high-value, badly neglected approach to reducing catastrophic/x-ri...

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## Transcript

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