Activists launch hunger strikes outside DeepMind and Anthropic offices over race to build advanced AI

[midian182]

WTF?! As AI companies invest billions into making the technology increasingly smarter and more powerful, fears about the path that humanity is walking continue to grow. Two activists take AI's threat of societal disruption or even annihilation so seriously that they have gone on hunger strike outside the offices of Google DeepMind and Anthropic, calling for a pause in development.

45-year-old Guido Reichstadter has been camped outside Anthropic's San Francisco offices for just over a week now, during which time he has not consumed any food. He told Business Insider that he plans to stay there on hunger strike until the company addresses his concerns about its AI development.

In a message posted to online forum LessWrong, Reichstadter wrote, "I am calling on Anthropic's management, directors, and employees to immediately stop their reckless actions, which are harming our society and to work to remediate the harm that has already been caused."

Hi it's Guido, out here with my friend Bill Lo in front of Anthropic, Day 5 going strong!

Check out this great article in the link below by Dr. Émile Torres @xriskology
on the rot at the heart of Anthropic- hope to be able to speak with him on livestream soon! pic.twitter.com/Ks9e1Sef21

– Guido Reichstadter (@wolflovesmelon) September 7, 2025

Reichstadter said he has asked Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to completely cease work on frontier AI development. On the first day of his protest, he delivered a letter to Amodei's desk asking "to stop developing that technology and to do everything in his power to stop the race that he's participating in."

Until he gets an answer from Amodei, Reichstadter will be waiting outside the office, subsisting on water, electrolytes, and multivitamins.

Reichstadter wants to halt progression towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Superintelligence (ASI). While we hear a lot about the quest for AGI, which is a system that can perform any intellectual task that a human can, ASI is a step beyond AGI, vastly exceeding human intelligence in every area.

"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," he wrote. "They are warning us that the creation of extremely powerful AI threatens to destroy life on Earth. Let us take these warnings seriously."

Reichstadter is the founder of Stop AI, a non-violent civil resistance organization working to permanently ban AGI/ASI development to prevent human extinction, mass job loss, and many other problems. He told BI that he was previously arrested for chaining shut the doors of OpenAI's offices. His case is going to trial this month.

The protest has inspired others to stage their own hunger strikes. Michael Trazzi, a 29-year-old former AI safety researcher from France, has been outside of DeepMind's London headquarters without food for over three days now. He wants DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis to "say that he would not release any more frontier models if the other frontier AI labs were to also stop doing so."

Hi, my name's Michaël Trazzi, and I'm outside the offices of the AI company Google DeepMind right now because we are in an emergency.

I am here in support of Guido Reichstadter, who is also on hunger strike in front of the office of the AI company Anthropic.

DeepMind, Anthropic… https://t.co/RJQCGxwTPY pic.twitter.com/KsCeVkcky8

– Michaël (in London) Trazzi (@MichaelTrazzi) September 5, 2025

"If enough of those leaders say it publicly, then you get global coordination around a pause," Trazzi added.

Back in 2023, more than 1,100 people signed an open letter urging all AI labs to pause their training on advanced AIs for a minimum of six months, allowing them time to jointly develop and implement safety protocols for advanced AI design.

Several high-profile tech minds signed the letter, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp, Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, and somewhat ironically, Elon Musk. Unsurprisingly, the plea fell on deaf ears.

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Activists launch hunger strikes outside DeepMind and Anthropic offices over race to build advanced AI

 

[Anton Longshot]

"The creation of extremely powerful AI threatens to destroy life on Earth" - so, how do they know this? Did they ask an AI?

Ironically these people will stop making a nuisance of themselves if they keep this up.
"Stop doing what you're doing or I'll suicide!" - No answer.
Intelligence has always been a rare commodity, with half of the world population possessing a below average IQ.

 

[m4a4]

I wonder who's paying for this "organic" "protest".

Let me know when they ship to China to protest them from being a part of this world-wide race. Maybe people will take the a bit more seriously, considering "AI" these days aren't...

 

[VitalyT]

And if it doesn't work...

 

[human7]

I should get in on this hunger strike. I don't expect it to change anything other than my weight, which could use a bit of a drop.

 

[Kashim]

I wonder who's paying for this "organic" "protest".

Ah yes, there's always some kind of conspiracy behind everything. Nothing happens naturally or organically. So which boogeyman is behind this? I'm guessing George Soros, since he's the top boogeyman of the mindless conservative sheep. Or maybe it's the so called "deep state", probably Obama or Biden's doing. Don't worry, the Fox Propaganda Network has your back. Let's wait and see what Shammity or that horse-faced lady on The Inbred Angle has to say.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

The point of a hunger strike is to simply bring attention to something. Think of it like all the smartass bitching in the techspot comment sections but really hardcore and in real life.

I don't agree with every meat space protest out there, but I always appreciate seeing people get out and actually do things in the real world instead of the slacktivism pat myself on the back-ism that is now prevalent is always nice.

In this case, the hyperbolic commentary does evoke an eyeroll, but I don't think the concerns are without precedent. Everyone has seen how social media has in so many ways ruined society and how we as a civilization and species were just not ready for it (and still aren't), and so extrapolating out to AI's potential effect on human society and civilization as whole is not simple fear mongering.

Combined with AI's near bottomless hunger for energy and resources (and the negative outputs that come from that) and there really is a storm brewing here.

Humanity ending? I don't know about that, but all signs point to the future sucking harder and longer than ever before.

 

[Kashim]

I love the photo of the kid grinning and holding up a sign that says Hunger Strike Day 1. I can't wait to see what his expression looks like when he's holding up a sign that says Hunger Strike Day 20. I doubt they will last anywhere near that.

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

Hunger Strike? Reality, no one cares. Global coordination will never occur and never has.

 

[OortCloud]

Even if Anthropic were to stop, can you see the other companies stopping too?
Can you see monsters like Musk, Bezos, Cook and Zuckerberg reigning things in for the good of others? Time and again these people have demonstrated their utter lack of regard for anybody but themselves, do you really think they will change?