Hamilton Nolan argues AI workers should unionize to enforce safety slowdown
A columnist proposes that workers at OpenAI and Anthropic organize to force their companies to halt risky development.
What to know
- AI executives and employees publicly call for safety measures and slowdowns but refuse to act unilaterally, citing collective action problems and fear of losing competitive races.
- Nolan argues unionization—or coordinated worker action—could break the deadlock by forcing companies to halt development rather than waiting for government intervention or competitor compliance.
- Frontier AI labs (OpenAI ~8,000 employees, Anthropic ~5,000) are small and highly organizable compared to mature tech companies, making unionization more feasible than previous big-tech organizing efforts.
Hamilton Nolan columnistOpenAI AI companyAnthropic AI company
How it unfolded 2 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump posts
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Essay circulates on social media
The piece gains traction on Bluesky and Mastodon, with readers amplifying its core argument about the paradox of treating AI existential risk as more plausible than worker organizing.
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But there is a more direct path. The workers can take action themselves. They can organize, and they can make demands, and they can, if necessary, stop doing harmful work, in a coordinated fashion. They can unionize. Instead of begging others to save the world, they can do it themselves.
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And what about China? If they don’t join in the slowdown also, then we risk losing the race. (To extinction).
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Hamilton Nolan publishes "Unionize AI" essay
Columnist Hamilton Nolan argues that AI company workers can directly enforce safety through unionization, bypassing the ineffective incentives of executives and government. He frames unionization as more realistic than the current standoff where everyone calls for a slowdown but no one acts unilaterally.
“The workers can take action themselves. They can organize, and they can make demands, and they can, if necessary, stop doing harmful work, in a coordinated fashion.”
— Hamilton Nolan -
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Unionize AI • Is a strike less realistic than building a doomsday machine on purpose?
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