We hope our leaders will put aside their differences and stand together to continue to refuse the Department of War's current demands for permission to use our models for domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing people without human oversight.

[90 minutes later]

Ah! Well, nevertheless

OK, this is a cheap shot on my part. But still: we hope? What kind of milquetoast martyrdom is this? Nobody gives a shit about tech workers as living, breathing, human moral agents. You (a putative moral actor signed onto this worthy undertaking) might be a person of deep feeling and high principle, and I sincerely admire you for that. But to the world at large, you're an effete button pusher who gets paid mid-six figures to automate society in accordance with billionaires' preferences and your expressions of social piety are about as meaningful as changing the flowers in the window box high up on the side of an ivory tower. The fact that ~80% of the signatories are anonymous only reinforces this perception.

If you want this to be more than a futile gesture followed by structural regret while you actively or passively contribute to whatever technologically-accelerated Bad Things come to pass in the near and medium term, a large proportion of you (> 500/648 current signatories) need to follow through and resign over the weekend. Doing so likely won't have that much direct impact, but it will slow things down a little (for the corporate and governmental bad actors who will find deployment of the new tech a little bit harder) and accelerate opposition a little (market price adjustments of elevated risk, increased debate and public rejection of the militaristic use of AI).

Hope, like other noble feelings, doesn't change anything. Actions, however poorly coordinated and incoherent, change things a little. If your principles are to have meaning, act on them during the short window of attention you have available.