OpenAI employees in San Francisco were told to stay inside the office on Friday afternoon after the company purportedly received a threat from an individual who was previously associated with the Stop AI activist group.
“Our information indicates that [name] from StopAI has expressed interest in causing physical harm to OpenAI employees,” a member of the internal communications team wrote on Slack. “He has previously been on site at our San Francisco facilities.”
Just before 11 am, San Francisco police received a 911 call about a man allegedly making threats and intending to harm others at 550 Terry Francois Boulevard, which is near OpenAI’s offices in the Mission Bay neighborhood, according to data tracked by the crime app Citizen. A police scanner recording archived on the app describes the suspect by name and alleges he may have purchased weapons with the intention of targeting additional OpenAI locations.
Hours before the incident on Friday, the individual who police flagged as allegedly making the thread said he was no longer part of Stop AI in a post on social media.
WIRED reached out to the man in question but did not immediately receive a response. San Francisco police also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. OpenAI did not provide a statement prior to publication.
On Slack, the internal communications team provided three images of the man suspected of making the threat. Later, a high-ranking member of the global security team said “At this time, there is no indication of active threat activity, the situation remains ongoing and we’re taking measured precautions as the assessment continues.” Employees were told to remove their badges when exiting the building and to avoid wearing clothing items with the OpenAI logo.
Over the past couple of years, protestors affiliated with groups calling themselves Stop AI, No AGI, and Pause AI have held demonstrations outside the San Francisco offices of several AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, over concerns that the unfettered development of advanced AI could harm humanity. In February, protestors were arrested for locking the front doors to OpenAI’s Mission Bay office. Earlier this month, StopAI claimed its public defender was the man who jumped onstage to subpoena OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during an onstage interview in San Francisco.
In a Stop AI press release from last year, the individual who police said was alleged to have made the threat against OpenAI staffers is described as an organizer and quoted as saying that he would find “life not worth living” if AI technologies were to replace humans in making scientific discoveries and taking over jobs. “Pause AI may be viewed as radical amongst AI people and techies,” he said. “But it is not radical amongst the general public, and neither is stopping AGI development altogether.”
