Following Roe v. Wade protest, activist conducts hunger strike outside Anthropic HQ

Activist Guido Reichstadter is on day three of a hunger strike outside Anthropic’s San Francisco headquarters, demanding the AI company halt its development efforts. The protest reflects growing grassroots opposition to artificial general intelligence (AGI) development, with activists arguing that the current AI race poses existential risks to society and threatens to eliminate human employment on a massive scale.

What you should know: Reichstadter is protesting as part of the activist group StopAI, calling on Anthropic to “immediately stop their reckless actions which are harming our society.”

• He posted his statement on LessWrong, a forum founded by AI critic Eliezer Yudkowsky, warning that AI companies are “rapidly driving us to a point of no return.”
• The father of two previously staged a 28-hour sit-in on the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge to protest the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Why this matters: The protest highlights a growing divide between tech industry enthusiasm for AI and concerns about its societal impact.

• Tech CEOs like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have expressed excitement about AI replacing human jobs.
• Critics argue that raising the specter of an “AGI race” is a calculated campaign by tech giants to maintain investor interest and secure defense contracts.

The broader movement: Several organizations have emerged to challenge AI development beyond Reichstadter’s solo protest.

• Kim Crawley, a cybersecurity researcher and professor at the Open Institute of Technology, founded StopGenAI to financially support people harmed by generative AI and educate the public about avoiding these tools.
• Other groups include the AI Incident Database, which tracks AI-related harms.

What they’re saying: Reichstadter warned that “experts are warning us that this race to ever more powerful artificial general intelligence puts our lives and well being at risk, as well as the lives and well being of our loved ones.”

• “We are in an emergency,” he concluded. “Let us act as if this emergency is real.”
• Crawley told Futurism that tech billionaires intend to “eliminate paying humans for our thinking labor,” arguing that “we have the ability to fully provide for all eight billion people on the planet.”

The big picture: Policy and tech scholars note that AGI remains likely decades away from reality, if achievable at all.

• Meanwhile, activists argue that current AI development is already causing harm through job displacement and the proliferation of AI-generated content flooding the internet.
• The protest represents a stark contrast to the AI industry’s narrative of inevitable progress and beneficial automation.