Meredith Whittaker
President of the Signal Foundation; co-founder of the AI Now Institute; former Google researcher and walkout organiser
Signal Foundation
Ethics and justice
Whittaker runs the encrypted messenger Signal and helped organise the 2018 Google walkout. She argues AI is built on a surveillance business model, that 'doomsday' talk distracts from present harms, and that the newest 'agent' products threaten to hand companies control of everything on your device.
Declines to give a number
No number. "these doomsday predictions overshadow the existing harms that certain AI systems are already perpetrating." (June 5, 2023)Source
On timing
Focuses on the near-term: 'agentic' AI is "threatening to break the blood-brain barrier between the application layer and the OS layer" (SXSW, March 7, 2025).
SourceWhat they call for
- Privacy centric regulation limiting data collection
- Worker and user power over AI deployment
- Break up concentrated corporate power
- Security limits on agentic AI
In their own words
"If we have a chance at regulation that is meaningful, it's going to come from building power and making demands by the people who are most at risk of harm."
5 June 2023
Agentic AI is like "putting your brain in a jar" with a "profound issue with security and privacy that is haunting this hype around agents."
7 March 2025