Authorities in the United States have charged a 20-year-old Texas man with attempted murder and arson after he allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Daniel Moreno-Gama faces two counts of attempted murder and nine other charges following last week’s arson attack on Altman’s residence in San Francisco, District Attorney of San Francisco Brooke Jenkins said on Monday. Moreno-Gama faces the possibility of life in prison under the charges.
Moreno-Gama, from Houston, Texas, was captured on a security camera hurling an incendiary device at Altman’s home shortly after 3:30am local time on Friday, according to an FBI affidavit. The suspect then travelled to OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters, where he struck the building’s glass doors with a chair and stated his intention to “burn it down and kill anyone inside”, according to the affidavit filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California. After arresting Moreno-Gama at the scene, police recovered incendiary devices, a container of kerosene, a lighter, and a document espousing opposition to artificial intelligence and tech executives, including Altman, according to the affidavit.
The document recovered at the scene stated that Moreno-Gama had killed or attempted to kill Altman, and that he “must lead by example and show that I am fully sincere in my message”, according to the filing. Altman, whose company’s release of ChatGPT in 2022 marked a watershed in the rollout of AI, has become a lightning rod for heated discussion about the potential risks and benefits of the rapidly advancing technology. In a blog post after Friday’s arson attack, Altman said that while much criticism of the tech industry was driven by sincere concerns about the “incredibly high stakes” of AI, it was time to turn down the heat of the public debate.
In her news conference, Jenkins criticised what she described as “incendiary rhetoric” about the potential impact of AI on society.
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