Pull the Plug

Pull the Plug is a non-violent grassroots movement based in the United Kingdom, calling for binding Citizens' Assemblies on artificial intelligence — a mechanism by which ordinary people, informed by experts, would democratically decide how AI is developed, deployed, and regulated. Founded at the end of 2024 by Harry Atkinson, a former film-industry story editor, and Frieda Lurken, who co-founded the climate-action movement Extinction Rebellion, the organization positions itself explicitly as "not against tech, nor anti-AI," but as a campaign against Big Tech's "undemocratic control" of AI development and the absence of any public voice in shaping a technology with sweeping consequences for working people, communities, and the environment.

Mission and strategy

The organization's central demand is that the UK government fund a legally binding Citizens' Assembly on AI and commit to implementing its decisions. In the Citizens' Assembly model Pull the Plug advocates, a representative sample of ordinary people — not politicians or industry insiders — would be convened, briefed by independent experts, and empowered to set binding policy on how AI should be used. The organization frames this as a structural alternative to corporate self-regulation and technocratic governance: decisions about AI must be taken out of the boardroom and placed in a democratic forum where working people have genuine power.

Pull the Plug's focus areas span data centres, AI risks, and the design of citizen participation mechanisms — a deliberately broad framing that allows the organisation to function as a coalition umbrella, absorbing concerns about AI's immediate harms (job displacement, automated decision-making, creative-industry disruption, environmental impact) alongside longer-horizon safety concerns, without requiring participants to converge on a single theory of AI risk. Street protest and coalition action serve as the organisation's primary pressure tactic alongside its governance demand.

Coalition and the February 2026 march

Pull the Plug emerged as a significant actor in UK AI organizing through the February 28, 2026 "March Against the Machines" in London, which it co-organized with PauseAI and a loose coalition of other groups. The march assembled an estimated 500 people — the largest AI protest march in the United Kingdom, and, at the time, the largest AI protest globally — marching through King's Cross, home to the UK offices of OpenAI, Meta, and Google DeepMind. Harry Atkinson and Frieda Lurken both spoke at the rally. Global Action Plan coordinated simultaneous demonstrations against data centres across the UK on the same day, and the broader coalition included groups addressing AI's disproportionate impact on marginalised communities, including Mad Youth Organise and Black Sox. The march concluded with a people's assembly in Bloomsbury at which participants developed action strategies.

Position in the UK AI movement

Pull the Plug occupies a distinct niche within UK AI organizing: a grassroots democratic-governance frame rather than the AI-safety-moratorium frame of PauseAI or the institutional-parliamentary frame of ControlAI. Co-founder Frieda Lurken's background in Extinction Rebellion brings a mass-movement-building orientation — direct action, coalition-building, people's assemblies — into the AI governance space. The Citizens' Assembly demand functions as a structural proposal that can hold together a coalition spanning different theories of AI risk, which helps explain the breadth of the February 2026 march coalition. The organisation is crowdfunded via Chuffed.org and remains volunteer-led.