In brief
- AI activist Guido Reichstadter ended his 30-day hunger strike, launched outside Anthropic to protest unchecked AI development.
- The protest drew global attention to “AI doomers,” who warn frontier labs are racing toward unsafe superintelligence.
- Guido says his fast may be over, but his campaign for transparency and accountability in AI governance will continue.
Guido Reichstadter, an AI “doomer,” abruptly ended his participation in a global hunger strike on Wednesday after 30 days of fasting.
“I’m doing well as I rebuild my strength to continue the fight,” he tweeted.
Reichstadter’s fast began in early September, outside the San Francisco offices of Anthropic, the AI lab co-founded by former OpenAI executives. From the start, the protestor pledged to consume only electrolytes, vitamins, and water—no calories—as a means to force confrontation with one of the most powerful labs in AI development.
Anthropic, the maker of Claude, also happens to be the most overtly safety-conscious teams in the space.
At the same time, parallel hunger strikes sprang up globally. In London, Michael Trazzi (a former AI researcher) began a similar fast outside Google’s DeepMind headquarters; others joined or attempted to follow suit. But Trazzi and another protester, Denys Sheremet, ended their strikes earlier citing health concerns. Reichstadter was left as the lone visible doomer sustaining the fast.
Journalists shadowed him. Passersby—delivery drivers, security guards, employees—became inadvertent witnesses. His signs and posts often the same refrain: that AI development was being pushed recklessly, with potentially existential consequences.
He framed his demands plainly: Anthropic should admit the danger, halt frontier AI development, and engage in public accountability. Neither Anthropic nor Google has commented on the hunger strikes.
Why end now?
Hunger strikes are severe tools. They carry the risk of irreversible harm. Their moral power rests on vulnerability. But that power also decays once the strikers are hospitalized, incapacitated, or ignored entirely. In other words: the protest must press a point before it becomes a medical spectacle.
Response on social media was mostly positive to his protest.
Editor’s note: This story was updated after publication to correct the number of days in the headline.
Generally Intelligent Newsletter
A weekly AI journey narrated by Gen, a generative AI model.
