San Francisco students plan walkout at OpenAI, demanding pause in AI development

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (Diya TV) — Students and community members in San Francisco plan to walk out on Tuesday and hold a rally outside OpenAI's office on Third Street. They are joining a nationwide campaign that calls for an immediate stop to AI development until the public has a say in how the technology is made and controlled.

The local event will begin with organizers visiting UC Law and San Francisco high schools from 10 to 11 a.m. to invite students to take part. Participants are expected to meet at Bayfront Park at 11:30 a.m. They will rally outside OpenAI at 11:45 a.m. and finish around 1:30 p.m. Organizers expect three or four speakers to talk about how AI affects their jobs, communities and future.

Irreplaceable, the group leading the nationwide walkout, says AI development should not move forward until people have “a real say, a real stake, and real safety guardrails.” Stop The AI Race is helping organize the San Francisco event. The campaign's public listings show planned actions at college campuses and community locations across the country, including the University of Michigan, MIT, the University of Pittsburgh and Howard University.

The organizers want more than AI safety measures. They want the public to help make decisions about the technology and share in the money and other benefits it creates. Irreplaceable has pointed to possible effects on jobs, privacy and communities as reasons to pause AI development. These are concerns raised by the group, not proven conclusions about AI's overall effects.

The walkout is taking place as Washington considers whether to rely on voluntary safety measures or introduce rules that companies must follow. On Oct. 3, President Donald Trump announced an agreement with OpenAI and five other technology companies to improve their internal safety controls and bring in independent auditors. Reuters reported that the agreement did not explain how the rules would be enforced or what would happen to companies that failed to follow them. The White House said the agreement would encourage responsible AI development while supporting innovation.

Public concerns are also influencing the debate. A Reuters/Ipsos poll reported by Reuters found that three-quarters of Americans believed AI companies had not done enough to prevent serious harm to society.

San Francisco has seen several AI protests this year. In July, about 200 people marched from OpenAI to Anthropic and Google DeepMind. They called for a pause in training new AI models. Stop The AI Race, which organized the march, has previously described a pause focused on training larger models that can perform a wider range of tasks. Tuesday's campaign makes a broader demand: stop AI development until the public has a role in decisions and safety protections are in place.

The rally will bring these demands directly to the offices of one of the companies at the center of the AI industry. The nationwide campaign is also calling on government officials to oversee AI decisions. Organizers say those decisions are now mostly controlled by technology companies.