Holly Elmore Personal blog of Holly Elmore, with a lot of thoughts about pausing AI. I’m the founder of PauseAI US and paid subscriptions to this blog are tax-deductible don...

“You should start really with what you want or even more as far as negotiating. And so starting weaker with, oh, maybe we should just slow down and more wishy-washy. If we had done that, then the debate now would be something closer to, do we have to stop it all? So you really don't do yourself any favors by weakening your opening position.”

Doom Debates! · AI Research & Frontier Labs · October 2026

Elmore, who runs PauseAI US, explaining why the movement asked for a full pause rather than a slowdown. She argues that "slow" or "pace" is now what the AI companies themselves offer, only because the pause demand moved the Overton window first.

Doom Debates! · 2026-10-13 Listen to the episode → More from Holly Elmore → More AI Research & Frontier Labs quotes →

Transcript

Doom Debates! Around 11:30 into the episode

Holly Elmore

lines. He was the guy on the megaphone, like keeping everybody kind of like entertained for the whole protest, like and getting lots of great clips. Like he would just like go for like an hour oratory. It was very impressive.

Liron Shapira

…to it because you're like, oh, okay, it's like pause, but it's more measured, right? Whereas if you'd yelled pace the frontier a couple years ago, it'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, pace the frontier. What is this? Where is this coming from? Right. Because the idea hadn't been seeded in mind space.

Holly Elmore

Yeah. And I, you know, for just a little info about how the Overton window works, like, you should start really with like what you want or even more as far as like negotiating, you know? And so starting weaker with like, oh, like maybe we should just slow down and more like wishy-washy. Like if we had done that, you know, then the debate now would be something like closer to like, do we have to stop it all? You know, so you really don't do yourself any favors by like weakening your opening position. And like now slow, instead of being like people kind of trying to meet Pause AI and like suggesting like, well, maybe we could slow down. Like slow is now the offer of these companies, but they had to, you know, name it their own thing. Pace.

Liron Shapira

So also regarding PASAI, there's two organizations, as you said, there's PauseAI US and there's PASAI Global. And within POS AI Global, I know there's people who are, you know, there's like PauseAI US, PASA France, PASAI Belgium. So there's regional chapters of it, but then PauseAI US is just a…

Holly Elmore

No, they disendors me. It was specifically me. Yeah.

Liron Shapira

At the end of the day, we all want to see AI get paused. I think the two organizations are aligned, even if they're not operationally working together. We also want to talk about Eliezer Yudkowsky, the leader of the movement, somebody I've been following since 2007. I've said on this show last year…

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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