Imagine being so terrified of artificial intelligence that you’re willing to starve yourself in front of billion-dollar tech companies. That’s exactly what’s happening outside Anthropic’s San Francisco office and Google DeepMind’s London headquarters, where two activists have been surviving on nothing but water, electrolytes, and multivitamins now entering their second week.
Guido Reichstadter, 45, founded Stop AI after concluding that the race toward artificial general intelligence represents an existential emergency. He’s camped outside Anthropic’s doors, having personally delivered a letter to CEO Dario Amodei demanding an immediate halt to frontier AI development. Meanwhile, MichaĂ«l Trazzi, a 29-year-old former AI safety researcher, mirrors the protest in London, calling on DeepMind’s leadership to publicly commit to stopping new model releases if other labs follow suit.
The Ignored Warning Letters
Industry experts called for a pause in 2023, but development continues at breakneck speed.
These aren’t fringe conspiracy theorists. In 2023, over 1,100 experts and tech leaders—including Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk—signed an open letter requesting a six-month pause on training advanced AI systems. The industry largely dismissed these concerns while doubling down on development spending.
Even Anthropic’s own CEO acknowledges the stakes. Amodei recently warned that AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years. Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called “godfather of AI,” suggests many people in big companies are “downplaying the risk publicly.” Yet the development race continues, fueled by competitive pressure and multi-billion-dollar investments.
David vs. Silicon Valley Goliath
Hunger strikes signal desperation, but can individual protest slow corporate momentum?
Reichstadter has form with dramatic gestures—he previously chained the doors of OpenAI and faces trial for that stunt. But hunger strikes against tech giants feel simultaneously medieval and perfectly suited for our TikTok-driven attention economy. The visual of skeletal protesters outside gleaming corporate campuses creates the kind of stark contrast that social media amplifies.
The question isn’t whether these activists will change corporate minds directly. It’s whether their extreme measures will finally force the broader conversation about who gets to decide humanity’s AI future—the companies building it, or the rest of us living with the consequences. Watch for how other AI safety advocates respond, and whether this dramatic escalation sparks the coordinated industry pause these protesters desperately seek.
