Tech Executives Are Hiring Security as Backlash Toward AI Gets Violent

Tech executives terrified of the public backlash against AI are beefing up their security as violent threats spill over into the real world.

The Wall Street Journal reports that some executives are so nervous that they are traveling with armed guards while maintaining a low profile.

It follows two incidents this year. A 20-year-old man is currently on trial, accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at the San Francisco home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Prosecutors allege that Daniel Moreno-Gama threatened to burn down OpenAI’s headquarters.

Moreno-Gama outside Altman’s home.

Around the same time that was happening, a man snuck into Anthropic’s headquarters carrying an envelope with an executive’s name on it before telling a guard that the executive was “going to be killed.”

Dakota Dominguez, an executive at the Silicon Valley-based security firm JPT Security, tells the WSJ that a few years ago, executives didn’t have security. “A lot of tech companies now are incorporating that into their budgets,” says Dominguez.

Fear and Loathing

According to The Economist, more Americans would be happier living next door to a nuclear reactor than an AI data center.

Local residents around the U.S. are up in arms over plans being drawn up for a water-thirsty data center in their neighborhood. And, remarkably, in a deeply polarized nation, Americans of all political beliefs are united in their dislike of them.

“It seems like the big tech companies are kind of steamrolling the citizens,” Jeff Samoray, a Michigan resident, tells Reuters.

Outside of AI data centers, there are fears that the technology is here to upend the job market and consolidate wealth and power in the hands of a few tech titans.

“That’s why people are setting warehouses on fire,” Bonnie Kate Wolf, a former Pinterest employee who was laid off because of AI, tells the WSJ. “You can’t go back to serfdom. It really feels like the people in power want to be kings. Historically, that doesn’t work out for kings.”

Tech backlash is not just confined to AI: earlier this week, PetaPixel reported on Meta Ray-Ban owners who are too scared to wear the smart glasses in public.

Image creditsHeader photo licensed via Depositphotos.

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