Pounding drums and a blaring brass band accompanied dozens of demonstrators marching through San Francisco on Saturday to demand an international treaty limiting artificial intelligence development.
For the first time, organizers expanded their reach to simultaneous gatherings in roughly twenty cities, including Paris, Montreal, and Berlin.
Protesters hoisted signs featuring stark warnings, including “In a race to the precipice, nobody wins” and “AI is a weapon of mass destruction!” Others chanted, “Hit the brakes hard, slow down the pace, we don’t want an AI race!” and “We don’t want a robot war!”
Many placards referenced the 2025 book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, authored by American researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky.
Si Anthropic s’arrête seul, OpenAI risque de foncer devant. If the United States stops alone, China risks charging ahead,” said Zack M. Davis, a former software engineer participating in the San Francisco march, telling AFP that only a treaty can prevent the world from rushing toward nothingness.
“The current technology is really great,” Davis told AFP, brandishing an AI-generated placard depicting humanoid athletes in the colors of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini abandoning a sprint. “But that doesn’t mean the danger isn’t real.”
Acknowledging the nascent stage of the movement, Katia Bravo, a student at Berkeley, urged fellow demonstrators to maintain pressure. “It’s hard not to see these actions as a whisper,” Bravo told AFP. “But if you stopped, it would be silence. (…) If we keep whispering together, we will make a lot of noise.”
In September, prior to receiving Xi Jinping in Washington, Donald Trump had dismissed the idea of slowing down, declaring that whoever wins the AI race wins outright.
