Flyering Guide

Why Flyering?

• The goal of flyering is to create and grow a local PauseAI community
• To accomplish that, the initial goal of flyering should be to announce a community meeting, for everyone who is interested to come and learn about PauseAI and what they can do to help
• Later flyering efforts can center around informing the public, finding new members, spreading the word about an upcoming protest, getting petition signatures, etc., and many of these purposes can be easily pursued at the same time

Flyer contents

• Find existing materials in the Flyers folder
  .
• Existing flyers can be edited to be more specific to your purpose. Use the Figma template
  to create your own.

The #1 most useful thing about a flyer is not its contents, but the engagement you get with the people you are distributing it to. The #2 most useful thing is a direct call to action, especially if it would result in a connection / getting their contact info. The contents themselves are still important, though. Take the time to consider your audience, consider your goal, and do what you can to bridge the gap between them.

Things to always include:

• A direct call to action, made as legible and simple as possible

  • (Learn more at this website!”, “Find out how you can help!”, “Join us!”, “Call your representatives!”, “Come to this meeting!”, “Join this protest!“)

• The time and place of your event, where applicable (We recommend the upcoming weekend)

• A way to join your local group (e.g. a QR code to an easy sign-up list)

• PauseAI branding

Other things to consider including:

• Something eye-catching / engaging / hooking

• Something informative

• A natural progression of concerns (toward x-risk)

• Expert sources / quotes

• A way to contact you

• A very small gift, like a stapled piece of candy or a dime on double-sided tape

  • Psychologically, when you give someone something, they are more likely to feel like they should give you something in return (their time, attention, consideration, etc.)

Flyer printing

There are many, many options for printing flyers, depending on budget constraints and quality and timing requirements. Double-sided full-color printing can be pricey (on the order of $1 USD per page). On the lowest end (if a very good sale is on), under 10 cents per page is sometimes possible when bulk printing single-sided on small pages.

• Volunteers have had success with online printing from stores like 48 Hour Print, VistaPrint, and Bizay
• Check with your local print shop and compare prices to online stores
• If you need a dirt-cheap option at low volume, consider printing single-sided flyers for the lowest print cost in your area
• Make sure to get all your materials printed well in advance, taking delivery time into account
• If you are tight on time, you can print at home, or use a local print shop, or print at your local library

Flyering setup

• Even for a brief one-time outing, it’s a good idea to have at least 100 flyers. Better too many than too few!

  • Caution: If your flyer has event-specific info on it, it will be useless after the event, so don’t go too overboard
  • Pro tip: you can staple a small slip of event-specific info to a larger evergreen flyer

• It can be very helpful to have an A-frame sign at your feet.

  • It gives those who read it a chance to choose to engage you on their own
  • It can make people think, even if they haven’t engaged with you
  • See A-Frame Flyering Signs (Google Drive)

• It’s good to have a form that people can sign on the spot if they are interested in what you have to say and engage in a conversation

  • If people fill out their info, it’s much easier to contact them, invite them to events, and organize a local group; you can do this with a clipboard, pen, and printed sign-up form or petition

• It can be useful to have pre-generated and labeled QR codes in an album on your phone or in a printed trapper for any digital resources you might want to point people to during conversations (e.g. websites, articles, papers, podcasts, videos)

• If you have two or more volunteers, you can split up the flyering effort to cover more area, or you can set up a table (where permitted)

• Plan to stay out for a least a couple hours

  • It can take time to find your feet
  • If you get on a roll, and if you have the time and the energy, you might as well keep going!

Tips and Lessons Learned

You can do this!

Here’s a story from volunteer Nathan Metzger:

I’m not the activist type. I’m an autistic introvert with high social anxiety. Thinking about engaging people on the street made me so nervous I felt physically ill. There are few things I was more afraid of than embarrassing myself in public, but the literal end of the world is one of those things. So, I put that fear to my back, and I let it push me forward. I did it anyway — I did it scared. I ordered all the supplies, planned a day and a place, and went alone. It took about an hour for me to feel like I knew what I was doing. After I had some positive and negative interactions, I noticed I was still alive, I stopped feeling scared, and against all expectations, I started having fun.

Location Matters

1. Public University campuses are ideal locations:

   • They have areas that are open to the public, where solicitation is allowed so long as the local laws and the campus’s rules of etiquette are followed
   • They are full of curious, energetic people who may have time on their hands
   • They can be predictably busy at specific times of day in specific locations
   • Trying to target a specific subset of students isn’t necessary at all, since all kinds of people share these concerns

2. Downtowns

   • The most important factor is whether the area has a lot of foot traffic; downtowns are especially great for this, especially in big cities
   • You can find people of a wider range of demographics than college students

3. Other busy walkable areas

   • Outdoor malls / markets / plazas
   • Busy sidewalks
   • Public parks

• Always check your local laws and ordinances

  • When flyering, you can and should be effective without getting negative attention from security or police

  • Your specific location may have additional rules and restrictions

    • If any special permissions are needed, try to get approval well in advance.

• When you arrive, try to strike a balance between optimizing your location and actually doing the flyering.

  • It is a good idea to look around to see where the high traffic is; you might double the number of flyers you’re handing out by moving to a slightly better spot
  • However, traffic patterns can ebb and flow; if you move around too much, you will have less time for actually handing out flyers
  • If you feel like you have found the best location, you can stay there the whole time

• And of course: Be safe!

How to engage passersby

Including overly-detailed instructions on how to behave like a person, for those of us who don’t automatically know how!

(The information here is highly detailed, in case some of it is helpful to you. However, it is important to emphasize that “just doing it” is the best policy! It will be okay, and you will learn a lot of useful things quickly.)

1. Offer flyers to anyone who is not buried in their phone or in a conversation

   • For those who look busy, some truly are busy and some are trying to avoid you; don’t waste your energy!
   • However, if you are getting more “yes” than “no,” then you should try engaging more people

2. Be confident, friendly, and non-threatening

3. Look directly at a passerby, ask them if they want a flyer or if you can give them one, and hold the flyer out toward them

4. If they accept and stick around for a moment, engage them further by asking them about their thoughts/concerns and start a conversation; if they say no, politely move on

5. If someone is approaching and makes eye contact when they are less than 5 seconds away, then keep eye contact with them until they are within flyer-offering distance

   • If you look away, that lowers your apparent interest in them and they likewise won’t be interested in you; on the other hand, don’t just stare at people

6. Physical proximity matters; it’s best to just ignore people who are farther away (>20ft or 6m) if you’re in a wide space

   • You can’t physically reach them, and they might be intentionally avoiding you anyway; there are more fish in the sea!

7. Don’t get in the way of passersby; you don’t need to do that to get the attention of the people you are trying to reach

8. Seek out a balance between having conversations and handing out more flyers

   • Having positive face-to-face conversations is very high-value for recruiting members
   • If an interaction is going nowhere or is negative, find a way to politely disengage and hand out more flyers
   • If you’re able to go with at least one other person, it’s easier to have conversations and continue distributing materials at the same time

9. Aim to inform, not to persuade

   • Don’t necessarily set out to change minds; many people would be concerned if they knew what you know, and many people are already concerned but don’t know what to do about it. Go find your people!
   • People tend to be curious when they hear that there is something that might affect them that they don’t know about

10. Engage with empathy

    • Many people have worries about AI that aren’t the same as your own. Don’t try to change what they’re worried about. Instead, acknowledge their concerns and invite them into the broad umbrella of PauseAI: people who want to put a pause on AI and its risks.
    • Try not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Use “Yes And.” If they have real concerns about AI that seem too mild to you or seem to be focused on the wrong things, don’t communicate that they are wrong; communicate that they are more right than they know.
    • When engaging someone who appears to be very agreeable, it’s good to speak a little softer and act more gentle. Remember, to others, you are a stranger with an unknown agenda, and some people are more nervous to speak to you than you are to them

Some things to say

To get attention:

1. “Can I get you a flyer?”

   • (Like you are doing them a favor, rather than trying to get them to do you a favor)

2. “Do you want to know more about the dangers of AI?”

3. “Want to know what’s going on with AI?“

When asked what this is all about:

1. “PauseAI is a global grassroots movement working to mitigate the worst risks of AI“
2. “Trying to close the gap between what the experts say about AI and what most people know”
3. “Maybe we shouldn’t build powerful AI systems that we don’t know how to control yet”
4. “A global treaty to slow down AI development until it is safe”
5. “We are a grassroots movement concerned about what experts are saying about the risks of AI”

• Note that arguments from authority carry weight
• Mentioning X-risk right at the start can be a turn-off, but leaving it out entirely usually isn’t helpful either
• In general, it’s good to have thought through what kinds of conversations you want to have, and have ready answers for most relevant things people might ask

How people respond

1. Most people who would happily accept a flyer won’t ask for one

2. A small subset of people do engage of their own accord and ask for a flyer or start a conversation

3. More people refuse a flyer than accept one, and that is perfectly okay

   • In a space with a lot of people, the law of large numbers works for you

4. Some people might say they agree with you, but still not want a flyer (and that is okay)

5. In most places around the world, basically everyone is extremely polite!

   • (You may not have the same experience if you are in an area that is culturally known for being impolite.)

6. The vast majority of interactions are positive rather than negative

7. Of the people who stop to talk to you, many of them are likely to automatically treat you as if you know what you’re talking about

   • And (hopefully) you do! You are taking time out of your day to communicate something to them that you think is important, and people often recognize that.

8. An A-frame sign at your feet acts as an invitation: some percentage of people self-sort and avoid you if they are not interested (which can save you some energy), and some people engage you on their own

Conclusion: Get on out there!

This is a lot of information. It is meant to provide a frame, answer questions, and fill in knowledge gaps in order to raise your confidence for your first flyering outing. But all you really need is a stack of flyers and willingness to try. This is something that almost everyone can do, and feeling intimidated or unsure is not disqualifying. You will learn a lot about outreach, about people, about the current limits of your knowledge, and about yourself. And after the first or second time you go out, you won’t have any need for this guide. Let’s do this — together!