The AI industry's reputational crisis
The Stanford AI Index shows that people hate AI. The attacks on Sam Altman's home show what's at stake.
For months, in private conversations with founders and executives at major AI labs and big tech companies, I’ve been hearing the same concern: the public hates what we’re doing. It has been a simmering anxiety, and with this past weekend’s events and new data from Stanford, it just became impossible to ignore.
On Friday, a 20-year-old man named Daniel Moreno-Gama threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman‘s San Francisco home, setting fire to an exterior gate. Less than two hours later, according to the federal criminal complaint filed today, he showed up at OpenAI’s headquarters on Third Street, smashed the glass doors with a chair, and told security he came to “burn it down and kill anyone inside.”
Officers recovered incendiary devices, kerosene, and a lighter from his backpack, along with a three-part document. The first section, titled “Your Last Warning,” listed the names and home addresses of AI executives and investors. The second discussed what Moreno-Gama called “our impending extinction” at the hands of AI. The third was a letter addressed directly to Altman: “If by some miracle you live, then I would take this as a sign from the divine to redeem yourself.”
