Public backlash to AI is intensifying — and transforming into real-world attempts at physical violence. Industry leaders are fearing for their lives.
Leading AI companies and their top executives are beefing up security, the Wall Street Journal reports, as escalating anti-AI industry sentiment is culminating in threats and attempts of violence against the people and ventures building leading AI models. Some executives are even traveling with armed guards, while others have taken to keeping a lower public profile.
“Tech CEOs, a few years ago, definitely did not have security,” Dakota Dominguez, an executive at the Silicon Valley-based security firm JPT Security, told the WSJ. “A lot of tech companies now are incorporating that into their budgets.”
Earlier this year, the AI industry was shaken when a 20-year-old anti-AI activist named Daniel Moreno-Gama, armed with a gun and a Molotov cocktail, unsuccessfully tried to firebomb the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. No one was injured, but the high-profile incident followed a string of violent threats and at least one OpenAI lockdown.
