Over 30 student activists came together on Monday afternoon to occupy the Gallup Building in Washington DC, home to a public-facing lobbying office belonging to ChatGPT developer OpenAI.
Once inside the lobby, the demonstrators unfurled a massive banner reading “Stop Stealing Our Future,” while others held signs with messages like “OpenAI bought my Senator.” The demonstration lasted two hours, and ended when police stormed the lobby, arresting 13 protestors.
At the moment, it’s unclear whether the protestors have been released or if they remain in custody pending charges, as the Metropolitan Police Department and District of Columbia Department of Corrections have yet to respond to a request for comment.
The protest was organized by climate group the Sunrise Movement and anti-AI organization QuitGPT. According to a joint statement, Monday’s action is just one of many so-far in August demanding politicians “Dump Big Tech” across over 20 states.
In a statement, one student organizer who attended the protest, Raya Gupta, explained that “my friends chose to risk arrest to bring the fight to OpenAI.”
“Our generation doesn’t have any guarantees about whether we’ll have jobs after college, or whether there will be clean drinking water for all of us or whether people will have any power left in politics since our elections keep getting bought by Big Tech,” Gupta continued. “We all believe that not taking action now, as the scales slide between the people and the billionaires, puts our future in great jeopardy.”
Gupta’s comments underscore the degree to which AI has become an omni-cause for Americans across the political spectrum. A growing number of Americans have been arrested for protests related to AI in some shape or form, whether attending town hall meetings to oppose data center developments, or occupying offices used by federal agencies to tool out AI immigration software.
Despite the growing disgust, politicians on both sides of the aisle have roundly embraced the tech industry’s extremely expensive lobbying efforts. Case in point, the recent opening of OpenAI’s DC Office comes as one of the AI lab’s super PACs injects over $140 million into the coming midterm elections, in a blatant attempt to steer AI regulations at the highest level.
More on AI protests: Climate Activists Pelt Microsoft Data Center With Balloons Full of Acid
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