{"id":904776,"date":"2026-09-25T08:48:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T08:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/904776\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T08:48:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T08:48:12","slug":"eat-the-rich-save-the-planet-climate-protesters-call-out-big-techs-disconnect-from-reality-ai-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/904776\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Eat the rich, save the planet\u2019: climate protesters call out big tech\u2019s disconnect from reality | AI (artificial intelligence)"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday evening, protesters gathered outside the unmarked Manhattan offices of OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, holding signs calling to \u201cEat the rich, save the planet\u201d. Over the next two days, groups also picketed outside the offices of fellow tech giants Google and Amazon; other protesters, including clergy, were arrested while disrupting a closed-door AI health summit<\/a> in the city. Tonight, protesters will target a Brooklyn gas power plant that was set to close \u2013 until it was purchased to power AI datacenters.<\/p>\n

The protests come on the heels of an Anthropic employee quitting his job with a warning that intensified<\/a> an already-growing AI panic: \u201cThe people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though it was far from the first time<\/a> an AI expert had issued a doomsday message about the threat the tech poses, this time it dominated public attention, arriving as trust in big tech has hit an all-time low<\/a> and communities across the country are trying to stop the building of datacenters. From 2024 to 2026, at least $64bn in proposed datacenter buildout<\/a> was blocked by local organizing. Today, bans have been passed in at least 18 states<\/a> at the local or county level, and New York passed a statewide moratorium this summer.<\/p>\n

People protest outside OpenAI\u2019s office in New York. Photograph: Julius Constantine Motal\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are claiming that they have the power to end humanity, but at the same time can\u2019t get AI to do a lot of major things that they\u2019re pushing for,\u201d said Jonathan Westin of Climate Defenders and the Stop Funding Billionaires campaign, which organized the \u201cunplug AI\u201d week of action.<\/p>\n

Like Westin, many of the protesters at the anti-AI protests this week were part of climate organizations, in town for New York\u2019s climate week, a global gathering of elected officials, policy experts and advocates timed to the meeting of the United Nations general assembly. Datacenters require significant amounts of water to function and an immense amount of energy to power, often using fossil fuels<\/a>, bringing pollution into communities. Organizers are calling for more datacenter moratoriums and stronger commitments to protect water access and to block fossil fuels. They say tech companies\u2019 greed is the real threat to the environment.<\/p>\n

Even Wall Street has warned the AI boom could cause another economic bubble to burst<\/a> \u2013 one that, protesters say, will be carried on the backs of working Americans. \u201cRegular people shouldn\u2019t be left holding the bag for a bunch of billionaires and trillionaires to play Monopoly with our economy,\u201d Westin said.<\/p>\n

Daisy Maldonado (right) of New Mexico at the protest outside OpenAI\u2019s office building in New York City on Monday. Photograph: Julius Constantine Motal\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Other groups at this week\u2019s protests, like the anti-war organization Code Pink, called attention to how many big tech corporations work with the US military: the US has used tech made by Palantir, xAI and Anthropic to establish targets and rain down bombs in the war in Iran \u2013 all with far-from-perfect accuracy.<\/p>\n

Alex Hanna, director of research at the Dair Institute, an AI research organization centering communities facing environmental damage and extraction from AI, said the doomsday prophesying from tech companies and former employees are a distraction amid \u201cthe climate and ecological crisis, the rising fascism that is borne out of climate politics, the making of climate refugees, and the growing inability of people just to get by from day to day. It\u2019s such a disconnect from what seems to be actually happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some protesters outside the OpenAI offices Monday had traveled from New Mexico, where a planned datacenter threatens the already-sapped Rio Grande<\/a> and a community facing a 20-year drought. Oracle\u2019s Project Jupiter, which is contracted to OpenAI, was pitched as a job creator for the community, but organizers say the companies aren\u2019t talking about how it would drain the area\u2019s limited water resources.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s just so much misinformation that\u2019s being sold, not only to the elected [officials], but to the community, and I think it\u2019s really a disservice to the people of New Mexico for these companies to come in and just basically lie about what they\u2019re going to do and how these projects are going to benefit communities,\u201d said Daisy Maldonado, a resident of Don\u0303a Ana county, the planned site of the datacenter.<\/p>\n

Outside OpenAI\u2019s office in New York on 21 September 2026. Photograph: Julius Constantine Motal\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

At an AI sustainability conference elsewhere in the city on Tuesday, five protesters were arrested for disrupting a keynote on using AI to solve the energy grid crisis. Activists called out the conference framing as \u201cgreenwashing\u201d, or using misleading descriptions to brand something as eco-friendly or less harmful. \u201cWe do not want to greenwash these datacenters that are being built,\u201d said Adrosto de Silva, who also traveled from New Mexico to the OpenAI protest. \u201cThere is no way that you can do harm reduction in any sort of datacenter whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Monday\u2019s protest, attendees \u2013 including the Tennessee state representative Justin Jones, who dropped in while in town for climate week \u2013 emphasized that many of these fights are happening in communities of color and poor communities, where the companies thought they wouldn\u2019t face local backlash.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis building behind me is a danger to humankind,\u201d said Jones, gesturing at the OpenAI offices. \u201cThe confluence of this techno oligarchy is a threat to us all. I\u2019m here because if they come for one of us, they\u2019re coming for all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n