![\"\"](\"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-15-at-18.01.26-e1789492094768.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhen Jacob Coxon broke free from Anthropic last week and voiced fears of possible human extinction echoed by AI insiders, it flipped AI leaders into advocating a “pause”. \u00a0Such calls have been made before but the context is now different. \u00a0AI is unpopular, wildly successful at attracting investment, and increasingly seen as already out of control. \u00a0If they can grasp it, this gives politicians and civil society a chance to take back control of the AI regulation agenda.<\/em><\/p>\n Politicians and campaigners need to cut through the welter of media coverage of AI triggered by the proposed ‘pause’ on\u00a0extinction risks, the increasing reports of rogue agents hacking ‘secure’ systems and fevered speculation about finances and the ‘real’ motivations of AI billionaires backing the\u00a0‘pause’, to decide two things:<\/p>\n The immediate objective should be to slow the development of AI models,\u00a0as Dario Amodei argues in his 3,400 word essay<\/a>, only not on his\u00a0terms. \u00a0Buried under layers of expressions of thoughtful concern, Amodei is proposing a set of voluntary<\/em> actions, with lots of vague caveats, to be decided on by Big Tech itself, which could then get legal force.<\/p>\n Instead society should treat the acceptance of a “pause” as an opportunity to\u00a0slow the industry right down so as to allow time for proper scrutiny and accountability in the public interest, in order to frame regulations. \u00a0To ensure the pause is real, data centre construction should be put on hold.<\/p>\n Don’t Take The Bait<\/strong><\/p>\n It will be tempting for politicians to treat the industry’s call for a slow down as a change of course, and even be tempted\u00a0to use Amodei’s essay as a to-do-list. \u00a0They shouldn’t take that bait.<\/p>\n Amodei’s piece\u00a0is in line with the established industry narrative:<\/p>\n ‘this magical technology is so powerful that it can only be developed and controlled by us. \u00a0We are the magicians, the sorcerers, alchemists and wizards\u00a0and we are your best chance of steering an AI-society\u00a0to heaven rather than\u00a0hell. \u00a0So leave it to us, and write our desires into law’.<\/em><\/p>\n Under challenge, Big Tech’s justification expands to the seemingly pragmatic:<\/p>\n ‘this is just moving so fast, your old-school politics, governance systems and legacy media simply can’t get up to speed. \u00a0You will never understand it so you cannot decide on questions of need or justification’.<\/em><\/p>\n In this AI political economy, the role of\u00a0the non-wizard class is then to buy AI, pay to educate people to use it, and enable its expansion into every field of human endeavour. \u00a0Pure and irresistible (if mainly imaginary) bio-physics of technological innovation set the speed and direction of AI, so there is no point in you questioning it. \u00a0Miss out and your economy will tank.<\/p>\n Escape Velocity & Technical Fixes<\/strong><\/p>\n Ever since OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT in November 2022, the default industry strategy has been to reach escape velocity, both Business-to-Business\u00a0through competition within their sector, and Business-to-Consumer in escape from scrutiny or control by politics, government and\u00a0civil society. \u00a0Until recently\u00a0it\u00a0has\u00a0mostly achieved that.<\/p>\n Alarming proofs that it\u00a0cannot control its own\u00a0creations has somewhat eroded Big Tech’s\u00a0magical teflon PR-coating but by accident or design – probably the latter – AI companies are still trying to draw any political scrutineers onto their ground:\u00a0of technical fixes agreed amongst themselves, rather than public interest.<\/p>\n Simple communications dynamics has given\u00a0them an advantage over critics: they dominate the media. \u00a0Just a handful or so of AI CEOs are the larger-than-life principals in the story:\u00a0Elon Musk with his dark imagery and attacks on empathy, Mark Zuckerberg with his gross ‘yacht’, the hyperbolic Sam Altman, and\u00a0Dario Amodei with his Harry Potter glasses and ethical pondering. \u00a0Consequently they\u00a0are\u00a0the primary AI news providers, with new models, astonishing feats, economic hype and spine chilling warnings. As a small number of ‘colourful’ personalities\u00a0they personalise the story and set the agenda which politicians consume.<\/p>\n Against that there are thousands of much less entertaining\u00a0politicians, who mostly\u00a0follow rather than lead, and billions of often confused individual voters and consumers. \u00a0Their story is simply much harder to tell.<\/p>\n So civil society and politicians must not\u00a0import Amodei-type lists of fixes (such as ‘Embedded Evaluators’) as the industry framing and focus of the terms, duration or purpose of a ‘Pause’.<\/p>\n Instead they should listen to and involve the growing number\u00a0of former AI insiders and watchers who both understand the workings of Big Tech and have a wider social perspective, and set their own agenda\u00a0for\u00a0a public negotiation of what a ‘pause’ should consist of. \u00a0Until now that would have probably been a futile exercise – why would the AI industry take any notice ? \u00a0Now the context [1] is different.<\/p>\n Losing The Justification for Data Centres<\/strong><\/p>\n With current computing technology the ‘brute force’ model of LLM AI development which became the ‘race’ to ‘super-intelligence’ triggered by Open AI’s ChatGPT requires ever bigger and faster and more powerful data centres.<\/p>\n Now the likes of Anthropic, OpenAI and\u00a0Elon Musk are backing a ‘pause’ in the race, the same logic supports a pause [2] in construction of data centres.\u00a0Their justification was based on the belief that there would be an ever escalating need for increased data crunching capacity. \u00a0That justification has been lost.<\/p>\n The social significance is obvious. \u00a0Unlike developing, training, testing and building AI models\u00a0which is done secretly in private digital domains, and in esoteric terms\u00a0hard for the public or politicians to understand, data centres are a\u00a0place where the AI race\u00a0plays out\u00a0in familiar\u00a0and understandable real world terms. \u00a0Earlier this year Enrique Dans called them<\/a>‘a structural friction point in the expansion of the AI economy’.<\/p>\n Politicians have been foisting the air,\u00a0water and noise pollution with its impacts on\u00a0health and property prices onto communities because they have adopted\u00a0the industry narrative that the AI race is a strategic national imperative. Now that industry itself is saying more capable models are currently too dangerous to develop,\u00a0data centres lose their imperative.<\/p>\n Data centres are physical concrete,\u00a0steel, silicon chips, cooling systems\u00a0and electronics. \u00a0Data centres for the AI race are worse neighbours than others because of their huge demands for continuous compute ‘density’ leading to vast requirements of energy inputs, and clean cooling water. \u00a0That and their noise is a major reason for local opposition across the world.<\/p>\n Data Centre construction, and with it the vast investment in Nvidia’s high performance chips, is also at the centre of the financial flywheel which has convinced politicians that AI is bringing an economic<\/a> miracle. \u00a0The case for net economic growth caused by the actual use <\/strong><\/em>of AI, especially once social and economic costs\u00a0are accounted for, is far\u00a0weaker.<\/p>\n Data Centres were already a potential choke point for the commercial and geopolitical AI ‘race’ but now refusing permissions \u00a0for more would give voters and politicians real leverage in a reset of the political-big-tech relationship. In strategy terms, thanks to Musk, Amodei and Altman espousing a ‘pause’, opposition to data-centres has turned from a bottom-up ‘bushfire’ tactic to one with\u00a0far more strategic potential, at least for now.<\/p>\n Civil society and governments should seize this moment, whether or not a ‘pause’ also deflates the investment bubble, which would make the task easier.<\/p>\n *** [2]\u00a0A pause is also likely to make the public and politicians more aware of conversations which have been ongoing in AI-world for decades about the fundamentals of the current LLM-based models, which effectively assume that intelligence can emerge from increased ability with language. \u00a0Others say that humans learn and communicate not via words but with concepts. \u00a0That could make LLMs a dead-end technology, with big implications for existing investments.\u00a0Whether concept-capable models would be safer or require more or less ‘compute’ is not clear to me.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n This blog was first published on 14 September 2026 as Campaign Strategy Newsletter 127<\/em><\/p>\n Subscribe to these free newsletters at \u00a0www.campaignstrategy.org<\/a><\/p>\n Chris Rose<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How should politicians and the public respond to AI leaders call for a \u201cpause\u201d in development of AI model capabilities? They should stop data centre construction: bring in a moratorium. Governments and civil society would then have control and time, … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n[1] Context is one of the seven\u00a0key ‘message’ factors in CAMPCAT<\/a> – see also pp25-6 in How to Win Campaigns: Communications for Change<\/em>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n