On Wednesday, Sep. 2, hundreds of UNC student activists and locals protested the G20 Innovation Ministerial event held at the Carolina Inn. The international event featured speakers like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Elon Musk, who joined remotely. The ministerial was focused on AI and technological innovation.
Demonstrators first gathered at the Old Well, holding signs and passing out water bottles while huddled in crucial pockets of shade. After gathering, the group made their way to the historic Chapel Hill hotel, where they made as much noise as possible to create a sound disruption representative of the noise created by large AI data centers.
Demonstrators listen to a speech at the Old Well from a representative from the Party for Socialism and Liberation (Image via Tony Mergliano).
The protest was organized by campus environmental activist group Sunrise UNC, with the support of organizations like Indivisible Orange County and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Isabelle Lynn, a representative for Sunrise UNC, said she was happy to see how many people agreed on the importance of demonstrating.
“I’m really already so excited about all the turnout,” she said. “We have several student orgs here and also just community members, faculty and staff. I’m excited for this event and I think we’re really gonna show the administration and the tech billionaires that’ll be in the Carolina Inn that we are paying attention and we care.”
While UNC didn’t have any direct role in organizing the ministerial, many students, including Lynn, used the demonstration as a chance to speak out against the university’s embrace of AI.
“Well, our administration is heavily tied up in a lot of AI contracts, including Flock,” she said. “We have 23 Flock cameras on campus. We are also having a fellowship at the Department of War and that’s focused on AI. And we also have an AI school that was recently created by combining the data science major and the library sciences major. So even though it’s a very large scale event, G20, with the top 20 richest nations in the world meeting, on a smaller scale we have a lot of collaboration with AI that’s unchecked on our campus and money and resources going towards it.”
Indivisible Orange County, the activist group behind demonstrations like the local “No Kings” rallies, held multiple smaller-scale protests leading up to the ministerial. Laura Love, a member of Indivisible, said it was heartening to see both younger demonstrators and older community members protesting for a common goal.
“It’s excellent,” she said. “It shows how wide-ranging the dissent is and the fear is about what AI and data centers are doing, not just to our society, but around the world. Because my fear is that the blueprint that is taking place in the United States won’t just stay in the United States, but it will go to more marginalized nations that don’t have the ability yet to fight back.”
Love said she hopes this kind of public action forces those in the tech industry to be open about the potential downsides of AI.
“They need to be honest about what AI is going to do for all of humanity,” she said. “They need to be honest about the disagreements that we have with how it pollutes the air, destroys water, destroys farmland, and is being pushed on us without any consultation with the average American or just the average world citizen.”
Protesters spill out into the street in front of the Carolina Inn (Image via Tony Mergliano).
Chapel Hill Town Councilor Theo Nollert was in attendance at the demonstration. He said he and other town officials felt blindsided by the announcement of the ministerial.
“Mostly what I feel is kind of powerless about it,” he said. “We sort of found out about it largely from the news ourselves, and I think it’s a weird position to be in as a local elected official when a very public body is coming to town, people have a lot of strong feelings about it, and we are just sort of not involved in the process.”
He said despite those frustrations, he sees these types of demonstrations as opportunities.
“It’s my job to represent people,” Nollert said. “So any chance I get to go to an environment where people have strong political feelings and encounter that on the ground, that is data that can inform my thoughts, my feelings, my decisions as an elected official. I think it’s just very encouraging to see so many people coming out, coming out because they are still engaged in our politics. There’s a narrative of despair and depression around American politics. Events like this are the antidote to that. They prove that people do still care and they will still come out, and I think that’s a good thing.”
And while it isn’t clear yet whether the demonstration will have its desired effect on the speakers and tech leaders at the ministerial, it is clear that the students and activists will be anything but silent on the issue.
Featured image via Tony Mergliano.
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