A report by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Silicon Valley artificial intelligence company executives are experiencing a state of extreme anxiety due to escalating protests against their technologies.
The wave of concern came after a protest organized by two groups opposed to large corporations, in front of the headquarters of "OpenAI" last Thursday, where they placed fake body bags and a banner bearing the names of children who were victims of an American bombing of a school in Iran, in protest against the company's cooperation with the US Department of Defense.
The two groups plan to repeat the protests in front of the offices of Anthropic, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Tesla.
But the report clarified that officials view these protests as a personal threat, especially after a shooting and firebomb attack targeted the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman earlier this year. The newspaper also reported that Anthropic alerted police about a man in Oklahoma who told a support robot he would come to their office with a gun after the robot prevented him from speaking to a real employee, prompting a police visit.
The report included other instances of online hate speech and attempted intrusions into AI company offices, but there was insufficient evidence to suggest these incidents posed a genuine threat. Nevertheless, officials employed additional security guards to accompany them at all times.
Polls confirm that artificial intelligence is not very popular; only 26% of Americans have a favorable view of it, a lower percentage than the popularity of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Although Altman is less well-known than Mark Zuckerberg, the level of animosity toward him and other AI leaders is increasing.
However, hatred does not necessarily mean violence, but the report indicates that artificial intelligence has already caused deaths, with suicides and murders linked to psychosis resulting from its use.
The Wall Street Journal report concludes with the question: How many times can AI executives threaten people's livelihoods, explicitly or implicitly, before they react violently? It seems that Altman's statements about AI potentially leading to the end of the world, or its role being to help people lose their jobs, are being taken seriously by the public, as evidenced by what he sees daily in front of his office.
