SAN FRANCISCO: A Stop the AI Race protest drew dozens of demonstrators Thursday as activists marched between OpenAI, Anthropic and City Hall to demand a pause in advanced artificial intelligence development.
The September 17 demonstration began outside OpenAI’s Mission Bay headquarters before moving to Anthropic’s offices on Howard Street. Protesters then continued to San Francisco City Hall.
Stop the AI Race organiser Michaël Trazzi said the group wanted employees at major AI companies to leave their jobs and support efforts to slow frontier-model development.
Organisers also called for an international agreement covering advanced AI development. The group says its central demand is a coordinated pause by major laboratories if other leading developers make the same commitment.
Protesters framed their campaign around concerns that increasingly capable AI systems could create severe safety risks. Those claims reflect the activists’ assessment of future dangers rather than an established prediction about AI outcomes.
Meanwhile, the demonstration took place during Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual technology conference in San Francisco. The event brought major technology executives and thousands of attendees into the city this week.
The march ended at City Hall, where organisers urged Mayor Daniel Lurie and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to declare an AI-related emergency and support limits on frontier development.
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The Stop the AI Race protest followed earlier demonstrations by the same organisation. Its website says activists have held recurring protests outside OpenAI since July, pressing AI companies to pause development in a coordinated way.
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However, that same material later identifies the specific “Hacktron AI” breach narrative as simulated rather than a verified real-world incident.
