Hundreds Marched Through London Screaming 'Pull the Plug' on AI - Here's Why They Might Have a Point

Picture this: hundreds of people marching through London's King's Cross neighborhood, past the UK headquarters of OpenAI, Meta, and Google DeepMind, chanting 'Pull the plug! Stop the slop!' One woman wore a homemade billboard on her head that read 'WHO WILL BE WHOSE TOOL?' with the O's cut out as eye holes.

This was not a scene from a dystopian movie. It happened on Saturday, and it is being called one of the biggest anti-AI protests the world has ever seen.

The march was organized by two activist groups, Pause AI and Pull the Plug, and the concerns ranged from AI-generated spam flooding the internet to fears about mass unemployment and even human extinction. One older man wearing a sandwich board that read 'AI? Over my dead body' told reporters he was worried about jobs disappearing: 'The devil finds work for idle hands.'

What is striking is how fast this movement has grown. The first anti-AI protest outside a Sam Altman talk in London back in 2023 had maybe two or three people. Last year's protest drew a few dozen. This one pulled hundreds.

Pause AI, which organized the event, says their membership is growing exponentially. Whether you agree with their message or not, the fact that regular people are taking to the streets over AI is a sign that the technology's impact is being felt far beyond Silicon Valley.

As reported by MIT Technology Review.

Source: MIT Technology Review