Hundreds of Protesters Just Marched on OpenAI's Front Door Screaming 'Pull the Plug'

This past Saturday, something happened that would have been unthinkable a few years ago: hundreds of people took to the streets of London to protest artificial intelligence itself.

The march cut right through King's Cross, which happens to be the neighborhood where OpenAI, Meta, and Google DeepMind all have their UK headquarters. Protesters chanted 'Pull the plug!' and 'Stop the slop!' while waving signs demanding that AI development be paused or stopped entirely.

The protest was organized by two groups: Pause AI and Pull the Plug. They're calling it the largest anti-AI demonstration ever held, and based on the coverage from MIT Technology Review's reporter who was on the ground, they might be right.

So what are these people actually mad about? A lot of things. Job displacement is a big one. Then there's the flood of AI-generated garbage clogging up the internet (that's the 'slop' they're yelling about). Copyright theft from artists and writers. And the bigger existential fears about where all this is heading.

What's significant isn't just that people are upset. Researchers and experts have been raising alarms about AI harms for years. What's new is that regular people are now angry enough to organize, show up, and shout about it in front of the companies building these systems.

Whether the tech companies are listening is another question entirely.

As reported by MIT Technology Review.

Source: MIT Technology Review