SAFETY FIRST

Fears that artificial intelligence might wipe us out have fueled the rise of protest groups like Pause Al. Their warnings are far-fetched, but not that far-fetched

- MORGAN MEAKER

THE FIRST TIME we speak, Joep Meindertsma is not in a good place. "I cry every other day," he says, speaking over Zoom from his home in the Dutch city of Utrecht. "Every time I say goodbye to my parents or friends, it feels like it could be the last time."

Meindertsma, 31, is the founder of Pause AI, a grassroots protest group campaigning for a halt in the development of artificial intelligence. He's been interested in AI for a couple of years, but the technology's sudden growth, spurred by the release of OpenAI's Chat GPT in November 2022, made him worry about the future of humanity. He watched as the bots became more and more sophisticated, and as figures like Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called godfather of AI, warned of the dangers posed by the systems they helped create. In the spring, Meindertsma became so consumed by the idea that runaway AI could destroy civilization that he stopped going to work at the database company he co-owns, choosing instead to focus on warning the world about how AI could go wrong.

"We are risking social collapse," he says. "We're risking human extinction."

The notion that AI could wipe out humanity may be extreme, but it's gaining traction. Hinton quit his role at Google in May and embarked on a global round of interviews in which he raised the specter of AI escaping from human control. Meanwhile, industry leaders including the CEOs of AI labs Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropicsigned a letter acknowledging the "risk of extinction." Meindertsma, who has amassed a small band of followers and organized modest protests in Brussels, London, San Francisco, and Melbourne, offers a glimpse into how these warnings are trickling through society, giving a younger generation-many of whom are already deeply worried about climate change a new reason to panic about the future: AI anxiety.