Hunger Strikes against AI development
In September 2025, four activists stopped eating to protest against AI development.
In September 2025, four activists stopped eating to protest against AI development. Guido Reichstadter started first, setting up outside Anthropic’s San Francisco office on September 1st with a folding chair, protest sign, water, electrolytes, and, naturally, multivitamins. The 45-year-old co-founder of Stop AI delivered a letter to CEO Dario Amodei demanding a meeting about AI safety risks. “My intention is to stay out here until Mr. Amodei agrees to meet me face-to-face and explain why he feels the right to put my life and the lives of everyone around us at risk“, he said.
A few days later, 29-year-old former AI safety researcher Michaël Trazzi began his own hunger strike outside Google DeepMind’s London offices, calling on DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis to “publicly state that DeepMind will halt the development of frontier AI models if all the other major AI companies agree to do so”. Trazzi studied AI in Paris and worked at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute before transitioning to producing online content about AI policy. He ended his hunger strike after 8 days on medical advice. Denys Sheremet, who cofounded the organisation Together Against AI, travelled from Amsterdam to join the London protest and lasted 16 days. In Bengaluru, 24-year-old Samuel Shadrach, an IIT Delhi graduate who’d completed an AI safety program at UC Berkeley, began livestreaming his own hunger strike on YouTube. “I have publicly declared that I am opposed to anyone trying to create superintelligence” while warning that AI could “cause human extinction.” Surviving on water and electrolytes, he lasted 18 days, ending on October 1st.
Reichstadter held out longest, finally breaking his fast after 30 days when no executives agreed to meet. Online reactions ranged from hero worship to mockery, with supporters celebrating the strikers’ bravery and critics mocking them with cake photos and snack offers. Hensen Juang tweeted: “Surely there are easier ways to get a date bros... You both should take each other out to a cute restaurant and eat.”
Anthropic and Google declined to meet the protestors.
Sources:
Business Insider. (2025, September 8). I'm on a hunger strike outside DeepMind's office in London. Here's what I fear most about AI. https://ca.news.yahoo.com/im-hunger-strike-outside-deepminds-091501454.html
SF Standard. (2025, September 14). Hunger strikers in SF and London are calling for an end to AI. We Facetimed two of them. https://sfstandard.com/2025/09/14/hunger-strike-ai-anthropic-google/
Trazzi, M. [@MichaelTrazzi]. (2025, September 5). Hi, my name's Michaël Trazzi, and I'm outside the offices of the AI company Google DeepMind right now because we are in an emergency [Tweet]. X. https://x.com/MichaelTrazzi/status/1964753355470774634
Shadrach, S. (2025). Samuel Shadrach [YouTube channel]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@samuel.da.shadrach/streams