OpenAI’s Sam Altman links ‘AI anxiety’ to Molotov cocktail attack on his home

New Delhi: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has suggested that public fears over artificial intelligence (AI) fuelled a Molotov cocktail attack on his San Francisco home.

In a personal blog post on Saturday, Altman shared a rare family photo, revealing the incident struck at 3:45am. “The first person did it last night, at 3:45 am. Thankfully it bounced off the house and no one got hurt,” he wrote, noting his family was left “shaken”.

“I love them more than anything,” he added, hoping the image’s power might deter future attacks. “Normally we try to be pretty private, but in this case I am sharing a photo in the hopes that it might dissuade the next person from throwing a Molotov cocktail at our house, no matter what they think about me.”

San Francisco police arrested a 20-year-old man who fled on foot after hurling the device. He later threatened to torch OpenAI’s local office.

Altman tied the assault to surging “AI anxiety”, citing a recent incendiary article about him. “Someone said to me yesterday they thought it was coming at a time of great anxiety about AI and that it made things more dangerous for me. I brushed it aside,” he recounted.

He urged society and policymakers to ease economic transitions from tech change. “The only solution I can come up with is to orient towards sharing the technology with people broadly, and for no one to have the ring. The two obvious ways to do this are individual empowerment and making sure democratic system stays in control.”

(Inputs from IANS)