top
San Francisco
San Francisco
Indybay
Indybay
Indybay
Regions
Indybay Regions North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area California United States International Americas Haiti Iraq Palestine Afghanistan
Topics
Newswire
Features
From the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature

Stop AI Protest at OpenAI

sm_stop-ai.jpg
Date:
Friday, August 22, 2025
Time:
4:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Event Type:
Protest
Organizer/Author:
Derek Allen
Location Details:
1455 3rd St, San Francisco, the OpenAI offices

Help us say, "Close OpenAI!" OpenAI is the company leading the race to smarter-than-human AI, also known as Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), i.e., an AI that is smarter than all human experts across all technical domains. Although libertarians have long espoused that technology always generally benefits workers, AGI would leave humans out of the loop in every major industry, and, ultimately, have no need for humans to repair or improve itself. AGI would mean mass unemployment, and a massive transfer of wealth to the 1%.

AI developers like OpenAI have stolen copyrighted works from creatives without their consent, and actively refuse to share royalties with any of them. It is ludicrous to think they'll start sharing wealth with anyone who they've caused to be unemployable. If the rich no longer need human workers or human soldiers, and everyone but them is homeless, what will stop the rich from throwing out the trash? It is the job of the people to reserve their right to strike, and protest the corporations that are trying to lead us to this catastrophe.

Furthermore, OpenAI continues to work with military defense contractor Andurill to develop increasingly advanced AI weapons for the United States and Israel. There is no world where putting extremely smart AIs in military weapons is a good idea.
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-anduril-defense/

2,700 cited AI researchers said in a poll that there is a 19% chance of AGI causing human extinction, and Geoffrey Hinton, who won the Nobel Prize for his work in AI in 2024, says there is a 50% chance of AGI causing human extinction. Some experts, like Dr. Roman Yampolskiy, say the risk of extinction is 99.99%. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, when asked about the worst case for AGI, said it could be, "lights out for all of us," and later said AGI will arrive in 2025. It is impossible to have experimental evidence that the behavior of an AGI will stay safe indefinitely and that AGI will never want something that will lead to our extinction similar to how we often caused the extinction of many less intelligent species.

We demand that workers, within their respective industry, are given the right to vote on what level of AI they are ok with, to stop themselves from becoming increasingly unemployable. We demand an end to the integration of AI into militaries worldwide. We demand that the US government shut down OpenAI, close any other company building AGI, and permanently ban the development of AGI.

We have a 56 minute presentation on YouTube, featuring Professor David Krueger from the University of Montreal, where you can learn more.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=3fMVKH-B_EA

Here is footage of our previous protest at OpenAI on July 25th. We will continue to hold similar protests at OpenAI every 4th Friday of the month.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=gkpSVk51S1I
Added to the calendar on Sun, Aug 10, 2025 3:08PM
§Stop Artificial Super Intelligence before it stops us!
by Stop Ai
1455 Third St, San Francisco, in front of Open AI

RECURRING protest every 4th Fri. AI has benefits but many probs: bigotry/biases, massive job losses due to automation, theft of artists' and writers' intellectual property, loss of privacy = total surveillance, energy and water gluttony, dumbing down of the populace, inaccurate info and disinfo, manipulation of public opinion endangering democracy, deep fakes causing distrust and deception so we can't tell what's real anymore. And all that ain't the half of it! When machines become much smarter than humans ("Artificial Super Intelligence"), many experts predict they'll go rogue, outta control, even cause human extinction. Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, the "godfather of AI," predicts they'll treat us the way we treat animals. He deems the existential threat at more than 50% likely. So let's stop further development until if/when (if ever) it can be done safely. Because we won't get a 2nd chance. If it gets outta control, and is 100 times smarter than us and able to self-replicate, there's no stopping it.
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!

Donate

$270.00 donated
in the past month

Get Involved

If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.

Publish

Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.

IMC Network