A message from Guido Reichstadter, who is on hunger strike outside Anthropic's offices

I am somewhat in two minds about the leading AI company Anthropic. On one hand, they are pretty much the world's best AI safety lab, producing so much extraordinarily interesting work, such as their papers on Alignment faking in large language models and on Agentic misalignment. For that I love them. On the other hand, that work is deeply insufficient for robustly protecting against AI apocalypse, and yet they push full speed ahead on capabilities in a way that makes them one of the main contributors to the reckless race towards the AGI precipice. For that I detest them.

Those are mixed feelings. On balance, though, I do not think their work on AI safety makes up for their reckless endangering of all of our lives.

An increasing number of people are reaching a similar conclusion, including in particular Guido Reichstadter, who is currently on his 8th day of hunger strike outside Anthropic's offices in San Francisco.¹ For this, he has my deepest admiration and respect. Here is his message from yesterday:

Hey it’s Guido! It’s Day 7 out here in front of Anthropic, going strong!

Last week I delivered a letter to the security desk addressed to Dario Amodei, asking him to stop putting the lives of my family and our community in danger through his reckless participation in the race to dangerous AI which he acknowledges risks the lives of everyone on Earth, and to do everything in his power to stop the global AI race. I told him I would be waiting outside his offices at 500 Howard Street, San Francisco, untill he responds.

I figure that if a man has consciuosly decided to put my life at risk of imminent harm, as well as the lives of my family - not to mention everyone on Earth - he owes it to me to look me in the eyes and tell me why he won’t stop doing so.

I’ve been outside his offices for 7 days so far, and haven’t heard a word from Mr. Amodei. Not a single Anthropic employee has taken the time of day to talk to the man starving outside their doors. Most of them keep their eyes to the ground as they leave the lobby I’m posted squarely in front of, as though the granite flooring had suddenly captured their attention. Maybe Mr. Amodei and his employees don’t think my petition that he respect my life and the lives of our community deserves a response. Maybe he thinks my right to life and the lives of my family deserve as much attention as a piece of dirt. If that is the case then you can be sure he thinks your life deserves as much respect too, and that’s how much he will give it as he continues to develop the most dangerous technology on the planet.

I believe that Mr. Amodei will conduct himself honorably and explain himself face to face. I worry perhaps that he might not have got my letter though, so I’m posting it publicly to him here. And I’d like to encourage everyone reading this to share this to the public accounts of Mr. Amodei and all the Anthropic employees, and to encourage him to meet with the man waiting outside his door.

Here is the text of the letter I delivered to the front desk of Anthropic’s offices at 500 Howard street:

To Dario Amodei, CEO Anthropic
September 2, 2025

Mr. Amodei-
My name is Guido Reichstadter. I am full of grief and concern for the safety and well-being of my family and loved ones as well as people everywhere who are endangered by the project to build artificial general intelligence and superintelligence which Anthropic is contributing to under your leadership.

I request that you stop endangering all of us by the pursuit of these AI systems and request that you join the effort to end this threat by ending these projects globally. I also exhort you to do everything in your ability to make our society aware of the serious and urgent danger it is in on account of the AI emergency.

For the sake of my children and with the urgency and gravity of our situation in my heart I have begun a hunger strike outside of the Anthropic offices at 500 Howard street while I await your response.

Sincerely,
Guido Reichstadter

Well said! And surely Dario Amodei will grant Guido Reichstadter a meeting? If and when that happens, I have a paper which I completed last month and which I believe can be useful as discussion material for that meeting: Advanced AI and the ethics of risking everything.

Footnote

1) Simultaneously, Michaël Trazzi and Denys Sheremet are on a similar hunger strike outside the offices of Google DeepMind in London. They, too, have my admiration and respect.