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Labour unions co-sponsor a protest against OpenAI's ICE contract outside DevDay
More than a dozen groups, including SEIU and the San Francisco Labor Council, rallied outside OpenAI's DevDay on Tuesday against its ICE contract. Their flyers and chants targeted OpenAI and its staff, so teams building on its API sit one step back from the pressure for now.
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What happened
- Beyond ICE, protesters targeted OpenAI's military and government contracts, the environmental impact of data centres and the AI industry's power in general.
- A protest leader said the group would stay until Sam Altman arrived to open the keynote, and his name drew boos from the crowd.
- Two artists from Berkeley's Odd Friend Studio placed a 5-foot sculpture of OpenAI's leaders and investors fleeing a sinking ship at the public entrance.
- The Verge places the rally within a bipartisan movement against concentrated power in the AI industry and the lack of government regulation.
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Why it matters
- exposure With the direct appeals aimed at OpenAI's employees and executives, OpenAI's own workforce is more exposed to this campaign than the businesses running on its API.
- decision Teams that advertise OpenAI as their model vendor to unionised or community-sector buyers now have a reason to decide whether to keep naming it and whether to test a second provider.
- precedent Union sponsorship of a DevDay rally makes organised protests over named government contracts a likelier fixture at future AI developer events.
Anyone with a badge for OpenAI's DevDay on Tuesday came in past a rally at the Fort Mason entrance [1][2]. People in cardboard robot costumes waved cardboard scythes. A large orange sign read "Drop the ICE contract," and smaller ones read "No killer robots for ICE" and "People over AI" [3][14]. One chant was written for a developer's trade: "Not another sequence, not another line, no more coding for ICE crimes," according to The Verge [13].
Most of the material was addressed to other people. One flyer asked the public to "sign the democracy pledge & end ICE + military contracts" [5]. The same flyer said: "OpenAI is building tools for Trump & ICE violence while top executives are helping bankroll MAGA's political power" [6]. When someone took a loudspeaker, it was to sing to OpenAI's own employees: "It's okay to change your mind; show us the courage, leave this behind" [7]. The Verge's account does not record any demand made of the businesses that build on OpenAI's API.
I think the sponsor list matters more to a team on the API than the costumes do. Two of the five sponsors The Verge named are labour bodies [1]. The flyer's link went to QuitGPT.org [5], and The Verge reports that groups such as QuitGPT have already led boycotts [8].
The complaint at the entrance was about who pays. Kevin, a co-creator of the sculpture, told Ars Technica: "There was always a contingency plan for the rich and wealthy. The rest of us? The workers of the lower decks? We are the ones that are going to suffer the consequences." [11]
Teams on a model API tend to tell themselves that a vendor's contracts stay with the vendor. Whether their users agree depends on two things a team can check before Friday. The first is whether the product names its model provider anywhere a user or buyer will see it, such as a "powered by" badge or a model picker. The second is whether those users or buyers overlap with the coalition outside Fort Mason, meaning unionised workplaces and the community groups that sponsored the rally [2].
Put the answers in a grid. A visible vendor with an overlapping audience is the box where Tuesday's rally can turn into a customer question. For a team there, I'd recommend writing down why it chose OpenAI and keeping a second provider tested, at the cost of maintaining a second set of prompts and evaluations. With a visible vendor and no overlap, expect a press question at most. Overlap without visibility waits until a buyer asks which models sit underneath the product. Teams with neither have nothing to change this week.
What to watch
- Whether QuitGPT or the labour sponsors extend their pledge or boycott to companies that build products on OpenAI's API.
- Whether OpenAI answers publicly on the ICE contract, or its employees respond to the appeal made to them at Fort Mason.
- Whether unionised or public-sector buyers start asking software suppliers which model providers they use and under what government contracts.