PauseAI Holds Largest Ever AI Safety Protest in London
PauseAI UK joined other organisations on Saturday to demand CEOs publicly back a pause in the development of frontier AI systems
Press Release — London, 28 February 2026
Around 300 people marched through London today – from OpenAI’s London office through the King’s Cross area to the offices of Google and Meta – to demand that the CEOs of leading AI companies publicly support a pause in the development of advanced AI. This would be the first step towards binding international regulation.
The protest, organised by PauseAI UK , Pull the Plug and other grassroots organisations, was the largest ever protest focused specifically on AI as concerns over the new technology grow.
Director of PauseAI UK, Joseph Miller, said: “We think this is the most important issue of our age. Every protest we hold is bigger than the last; AI safety is rapidly becoming a priority for the public.”
Earlier this week PauseAI met with Stuart Russell, Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley and author of the textbook used to teach virtually every AI researcher globally. “We are on a trajectory towards a loss of control,” he said.
“If AI companies succeed in building a superintelligence, most experts think the chance of human extinction is somewhere between 10 and 50 percent: that’s the equivalent of playing Russian roulette with everyone on the planet. We are allowing this to happen,” he added.
A pause is more likely than you might think
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, has already stated that he would support a pause in principle. The marchers today called on other CEOs – including those of OpenAI and Anthropic – to do the same.
The CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind have all signed a statement warning that AI poses a severe risk to humanity.
“If the companies behind the most-advanced AI systems don’t know how to make the technology safe then a pause is the only sensible option,” Miller explained.
“There is scientific consensus that the superintelligent systems the AI companies are racing to build could have catastrophic consequences: this is not hyperbole,” he added.
The protestors were also calling on the UK government to do more to protect citizens.
“We’ve heard promises from the UK government that AI safety would be a priority but there has been no new legislation, not even a consultation. We hope it won’t take a large-scale disaster for the government to take this seriously.”
Grassroots organisations join forces
PauseAI organised the march in collaboration with Pull the Plug and other organisations focusing on existing societal harms.
The event featured speeches and testimonies from people affected by AI systems, and was followed by a citizens’ assembly-style gathering to discuss what responsible AI development should look like.
A spokesperson from Pull the Plug said: “AI is already being used in every single aspect of British life. Sometimes, it does boring tasks for us and helps us with our day-to-day admin. But politicians are giving it the power to change our lives and hurt children, and we didn’t get any say in it.”
About the coalition
- PauseAI UK advocates stronger safeguards on advanced AI development, and specifically calls for a global pause on frontier research until we know how to build powerful AI safely.
- Pull the Plug is a new organisation focusing on halting societal harms from current AI products and supporting democratic oversight over them.
- Assemble champions the adoption of citizens’ assemblies as a means to ensure democratic representation.
Photos and videos
Media from the protest can be found here .
PauseAI is a non-profit organisation, active in more than 14 countries. We work to ensure that the development of the most powerful AI systems is safe and democratically controlled. We do this by informing the public, engaging with policymakers, and organising campaigns and events worldwide.