Comment by Alana Horowitz Friedman

An off switch refers to building the necessary technical, legal, and institutional infrastructure to make it possible for humanity to shut down unsafe AI systems and AI projects. It will also make it possible to verify that there is no dangerous AI development globally, if humanity decides to halt. Since a halt may be necessary to avoid catastrophe-level risks, including human extinction, there’s a strong case to begin implementing the off switch, since building the required infrastructure could take years. The off switch could be pursued without requiring global consensus on the need for a halt, as it seems uncontroversial that humanity should be able to halt a potentially catastrophic technology if it wanted to. An off switch may appeal both to those who primarily have extinction-level alignment concerns and to those who have a broader range of concerns. For example, being able to monitor, evaluate, and, if necessary, enforce restrictions on frontier AI development would also reduce risks from terrorism, geopolitical destabilization, and other societal disruption.