PauseAI Australia attendance PauseCon London

pauseai.org.au

Fly two volunteer leaders of PauseAI Australia to PauseCon London, to bring UK's learnings home and train our all-volunteer chapter

Endorsed by+1

Fly two volunteer leaders of PauseAI Australia to PauseCon London, to bring UK's learnings home and train our all-volunteer chapter

Endorsed by+1

Project Details

PauseAI Australia got founded last year and has been run by volunteers ever since. We coordinate with PauseAI Global and other national chapters.

The core team of 7 regular volunteers is putting in ~40 hours a week total, yet has no advocacy background and is self-taught. We are self-funded and have received no grants.

Sending two volunteers to PauseCon to learn from the best will let them teach remaining volunteers the skills, and expand PauseAI Australia to affect Australia's policy. At least one member will be an existing director. Ideal funding lets us send three volunteers.

Volunteers will within 4 weeks of PauseCon deliver a training session available to all Australian volunteers, and book at least 10 MP meetings within the following 6 months.

Theory of Impact

Global treaties are a coordination problem. While the most impactful countries are the US and China, middle powers can form coalitions and nudge the superpowers onto a safer trajectory for AI development. This was the topic of many sessions at the recent Australian AI Safety Forum 2026.

Sent volunteers will learn the playbook from PauseAI UK and other attending organisations that are more mature, then we teach other volunteers in Australia.

We have met with >20 Federal and state politicians across the major parties, on zero budget. We referred OpenAI to the Australian Federal Police and Attorney General, which got coverage in the ACS's Information Age, a national tech industry outlet. Our media outreach led to 4 other news articles. We coordinated 5 Senator signatures to the Superintelligence Statement. We advocated for over a year for Australia to have an AISI, and for it to focus on existential risk. The AISI has now been launched, and one of its three stated aims is catastrophic and existential risk.

A social movement is essential for x-risk policy change (lesswrong.com/posts/aoqhszdEWqcFWbnda/existential-ai-safety-needs-an-effective-social-movement) and we are the core of that movement in Australia.

People

Peter Horniak

Team Member

Funding Details

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End Date: -
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Funding Stage: Seeking first grant.
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Grants Received– no grants recorded

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Funding Asks

grantmaking.ai Launch Round

Applied

Minimum

$5,000

Ideal

$7,500

How the money will be spent

Minimum funding $5000 USD

Return economy air fares from Australia to London at current prices = ~$1.7K x 2 seats = ~3.4K USD

Shared accommodation for 5 nights = ~$100 x 5 nights = ~$500 USD

(PauseCon offers free 3-night accommodation but has limited spots)

Metro transport + incidentals + meals = ~$100 USD

Changes in airfares between now and grant allocation <= $1000 USD

Ideal funding $7500 USD

Extra volunteer air fare = ~$1.7K current fare + $500 potential increase = ~2.2K final airfare

Extra 2 nights in London to meet with PauseAI UK and ControlAI people = ~$100 x 2 nights = $200 USD

Potentially larger room(s) to fit 3 people = $100 USD

We are happy to return any unused funds (e.g. due to air fare prices increasing minimally, or us receiving PauseCon accommodation on some of the days).

Discussion

Pip FowerakerEndorsement11d

Getting Australians to events is difficult and expensive, but Australia is well positioned overall to be both receptive to Pause AI arguments and act as a middle power in AI dynamics. so this seems overall worthwhile in terms of expected downstream impact. Given I generally buy Pause AI's ToC and have been impressed with the Australian chapter, easy endorse.