One Year of PauseAI UK

About one year ago, I started spending most of my time organising PauseAI UK. At that time our largest protest had seen fewer than 50 attendees, no prominent politicians or scientists were associated with PauseAI, and I largely ran the UK chapter by myself. In the past year PauseAI UK has delivered two conferences, written an open letter signed by 63 UK politicians, arranged a conference in the European Parliament, and co-organised the largest AI protest in the world. We now have a strong team, with Matilda da Rui joining as Deputy Director and several highly dedicated volunteers taking on substantial responsibility and launching their own local groups around the UK. I'm proud of our track record and excited about the trajectory we are on. As AI capabilities improve exponentially, the number of people aware of the risks and motivated to take action increases commensurately. I believe we can harness this energy and turn it into real impact that actually improves humanity's chance of a positive future. Track Record June 2025 – PauseCon London We delivered the first PauseAI conference, PauseCon, on behalf of PauseAI Global, bringing together around 60 volunteers from around the world for the first time and training them to be better organisers and communicators. We welcomed a range of excellent guest speakers from the AI safety community, including Connor Leahy, Rob Miles, David Krueger and Kat Woods. PauseAI Germany, among others, came away from the event with renewed purpose and went on to organise a petition signed by 150 German professors. One volunteer, Didier Coeurnelle, was inspired to initiate and fund the next PauseCon in Brussels. August 2025 – Open Letter to Demis Hassabis In August we published an open letter signed by over 60 UK politicians, in response to Google DeepMind failing to uphold its AI safety commitments. Several of the MPs who signed later spoke in the Westminster Hall debate that we helped to organise in December (see below). The article in TIME that broke the story established that Google DeepMind did not provide the UK AI Security Institute (AISI) with pre-deployment access to Gemini 2.5 Pro. Notably, Google did provide AISI with pre-deployment access to Gemini 3 Pro a couple of months after the letter was published. September 2025 – Book launch party We held social events throughout the year, strengthening the sense of community that keeps people actively involved in PauseAI for months and years. One highlight was the book launch party for If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies in September. October 2025 – Documentary Screening in Parliament In October we held a screening in the UK Parliament of filmmaker Michaël Trazzi's documentary about SB-1047, the proposed California AI legislation. This helped to inform MPs and Peers about the kinds of AI legislation that could be in a UK AI bill, and the battle with Big Tech that they should expect to face. December 2025 – Westminster Hall Debate We proposed and helped to organise a Westminster Hall debate in Parliament on AI Safety. We wrote a memo which was sent to all MPs prior to the debate and drafted some of the speeches, putting us in a strong position to work with those MPs when proposing amendments to the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill. February 2026 – PauseCon Brussels We delivered the next PauseCon in Brussels on behalf of Global with another two days of training workshops for PauseAI organisers from around the world. The final day included a public conference in the European Parliament, featuring several prominent speakers, including: Professor Stuart Russell, author of the authoritative textbook on AI. Brando Benifei MEP, primary architect of the EU AI Act. Victor Negrescu MEP, Vice-President of the European Parliament. Risto Uuk, Head of European Policy at the Future of Life Institute. Brando Benifei discussed the strengths and limitations of the EU AI Act candidly and argued that the Act is not merely a product regulation, but that the code of practice can be extended to cover internal deployment within AI companies. We hope that PauseAI will be able to work with Mr Benifei to help see such changes implemented. Many volunteer projects were initiated over the weekend and several attendees have since held meetings with their own MEPs to follow up on the issues discussed. February 2026 – March for AI Safety We co-organised a march past the offices of OpenAI and other Big Tech companies in King's Cross, London. It was the largest ever protest focused exclusively on the risks of AI, with around 300 people marching and media coverage in MIT Technology Review, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal and others. The other organisers included Pull the Plug, a new group focused on the existing harms of AI. We consider the march a great success of coalition building between the historically opposed AI ethics and AI safety interests, with PauseAI and Pull the Plug represented in equal numbers. Theory of Change and Strategy Crea