After being firebombed: Altman says doomerism fuels violence in the AI industry, then takes a jab at Anthropic

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A 20-year-old Texas man was arrested in April after throwing a Molotov cocktail at the San Francisco residence of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, with a handwritten note listing the names and addresses of several AI executives found in his possession. Altman recently responded to the incident for the first time in a podcast interview. The 20-year-old man from Texas shocked the industry when he threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman’s residence on Chestnut Street in San Francisco around 3 a.m. on April 10. A handwritten note listing the names and addresses of multiple AI executives was found on Daniel Moreno-Gama when he was arrested by the FBI. Fortunately, the Molotov cocktail did not cause any casualties. About an hour later, Moreno-Gama appeared near the OpenAI headquarters in San Francisco, attempting to smash the door with a chair before being arrested by police. FBI agent Matt Cobo stated in a subsequent declaration: "This was not an impulsive act, but a planned, targeted, and extremely serious criminal act." Moreno-Gama currently faces charges including two counts of attempted murder, destruction of property using explosives, and possession of an unregistered firearm. More concerningly, this is not an isolated incident. A report by Fortune in April noted that physical threats against AI executives and data centers are on the rise, as anti-AI sentiment shifts from online debates to real-world actions. Following the incident, Altman said in an interview on the podcast Core Memory that he experienced a cycle of shock and frustration, trying to grasp the gravity of the situation on a practical level: "I know this kind of thing will happen again, and it’s very discouraging." He also made a remark pointing to specific targets: "I think the doomer rhetoric is not helpful. I think the way some other labs talk about us is also not helpful." Altman did not name names directly in the interview, but was clearer elsewhere: "The way Anthropic talks about OpenAI is not helpful." In a blog post, he described the competitive landscape as "Shakespearean drama between companies in the field," making the targets of his comments easy to identify. Earlier, while criticizing Anthropic’s Mythos model, he provided a more aggressive framework: "Saying you’ve built a bomb, that you’re going to drop it on someone’s head, and then selling them a bunker for $100 million is clearly brilliant marketing." He characterized Mythos as "fear-based marketing," suggesting that Anthropic is leveraging the perceived dangers of their models to manufacture market dominance. However, Altman’s claim that "doomer rhetoric is harmful" presents an unavoidable contradiction when placed alongside his own record of statements. Over the past few years, he has frequently used language regarding the existential risks of AGI in public appearances and congressional hearings, comparing the potential dangers of artificial general intelligence to nuclear weapons, and publicly stating that he worries about the existential risks of AI every day. These statements, appearing in speeches, interviews, and policy advocacy, have served as arguments for regulation and as part of OpenAI’s positioning. TechCrunch pointed out this contradiction directly in its report: "It is worth noting that Altman himself has been deeply involved in spreading similar doomsday messages, which makes his criticism of competitors more complicated." In the AI industry, almost every leading company has used the existential risk framework to some extent. Sometimes it is to push for regulation, sometimes to highlight their own importance, and sometimes out of genuine technical concern. This language has been circulating in the industry for a long time, and the boundaries are not clear. The question raised by the Molotov cocktail incident is far more complex than Altman’s accusations against Anthropic: When a set of doomsday rhetoric is transplanted from policy debates to the general public, does it also transplant something far more dangerous?

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