Posted on 07/15/2026 8:50:35 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Violent threats against AI companies are rising and spilling over into real-world security incidents
SAN FRANCISCO—A security guard at Anthropic rushed to stop the man sneaking into the lobby of the world’s most-valuable AI startup.
The man had entered by following closely behind a badge-swiping employee. He showed the guard an envelope marked with the name of a top Anthropic executive.
The executive was “going to be killed,” he told the guard, and he needed to warn someone, according to records of the April 15 incident viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The encounter, which took place five days after an attempted firebombing of OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman’s house, ended without violence or an arrest. But for executives at Anthropic—and across the artificial-intelligence industry—the threat was far from over.
In recent months, mounting opposition to AI has given rise to a surge of violent rhetoric, threats against people and property, and a serious attempt at harm. The phenomenon has executives at tech companies large and small reconsidering their personal security arrangements and how they talk about their products to a public that is increasingly wary of the technology and the societal changes it is ushering in.
Police in San Francisco have responded to several threats against employees of Anthropic and OpenAI, according to records viewed by the Journal.
The Texas man who allegedly threw an incendiary device at Altman’s house was charged with attempted murder and attempted arson. Officers found a manifesto advocating for the killing of AI CEOs and investors. He pleaded not guilty.
That same month, a man who had applied for a job at Anthropic using a fake name allegedly posted a threat to skin the children of company employees as “punishment” for what he alleged was the theft of...
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
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Everything using AI should be clearly labeled AI.
As soon as I detect AI in a video, for example, I stop it and move on.
Same here. Did it a couple of times tonight.
The problem with AI is that tech executives are not taking the human reality into account. They are so hell-bent on advancing society that they don’t care if humans survive the advancement.
I have a suspicion the plan is for humans not to survive it.
When has that ever happened when major technological advancements have taken place.
When the automobile became available to the mass public, do you think anyone cared about the horse and buggy manufacturers, what about when air travel became available to the public do you think anyone cared about the train industry.
The entire industrial revolution created mass upheaval in the world.
My point, we’ve had major technological shifts in the past, this is nothing really different, we should embrace AI and use it to advance the human experience just like major technological advancements in the past.
I was watching CNBC one morning this week and they had a guest on named Ash Koosha, he had made a full length 135-minute movie called Odysseus: The Fall.
The entire movie is 100% AI generated, all the actors are AI generated, his budget for the movie was less than $100,000.
Meanwhile in Hollywood, Christopher Nolan just finished “The Odyssey” which cost north of 250 million to make.
The subject of the CNBC interview was what happens to Hollywood over time if small groups of creative people using nothing but AI tools can mass create movies and TV shows that cost a fraction of tradition productions.
Will big name actors even be relevant when you can create leading actors with AI.
What happens to the dozens of people who you see listed in the credits at the end of movies when 2-3 creative people can create what it traditionally took dozens of people to do.
To me it’s a tremendous opportunity, some enterprising Conservative with minimal investment can mass produce movies, TV shows, and other video entertainment, using nothing more than AI tools versus the liberal BS that comes out of Hollywood.
Instead of rejecting everything AI related, I think it should be totally embraced and used to counter one of the main things Liberals use to influence the culture, which is Hollywood and the Entertainment industry
Here is an article and video trailer of the AI full length movie that has been created, using nothing but AI.
No pain, no gain.
Except we didn’t have hydrogen or nuclear bombs at that time so we didn’t have much to fear from a rogue car or train. In the wrong hands, AI can be used to disrupt our society and even destroy our civilization.
The people of Honolulu, HI on December 7, 1941, might beg to differ.
Those Hydrogen and Nuclear bombs also ushered in the peaceful use of Nuclear Power to provide cheap reliable electricity for hundreds of millions around the world, is that a bad thing ??
Let’s also remember those nuclear bombs ushered in the era of nuclear-powered warships that allowed to US Navy to operate in manner that is unprecedented.
AI will be the same way, it can and likely will be used in unspeakable ways, it will also be used in ways that will incredibly be beneficial to humans.
Just like nuclear technology, AI is here, it’s not going to go away, we must embrace it and use it for good.
I respectfully disagree FRiend.
The current trajectory of AI is fundamentally distinct from any past technological revolution. We are no longer simply creating tools that amplify human physical labor or streamline computations; we are engineering autonomous, cognitive agents capable of recursive self-improvement. That can actually ‘think’, and do that in a way that is better+faster than many humans (soon to be most/all humans, and then massively better).
The leap from the Industrial Revolution to the Information Age was massive, but the leap to Artificial General Intelligence (some say that some of the frontier models, eg the unrestricted Mythos, is basically already AGI) and Artificial Superintelligence (when we get there, and that is basically the creation of a small ‘g’ god) is entirely unprecedented.
The horse-drawn hoe, loom, cotton gin, steam engine, automobile, nuclear energy, computer, internet all could not do one thing …think! AI can, and is getting better at it, and soon at the level where it is AI that is training itself.
To be honest, thinking about the ‘nuclear’ thing made me realize that is actually a poor comparison. The threat is less similar to that of nuclear weapons, but rather of biological weapons. Since those can replicate themselves and spread far beyond their original target blast area, which may be why they are banned (even by countries like the US and Russia that own thousands of nukes) because the use of a biological weapon could easily come back and get you. What did my standard 6 teacher in Kenya use to call it: ‘hoisted by your own petard’ or something like that.
But hey, I’m just some dude on the internet. What do I know? What does anyone on this forum know? Which is why I prefer to see what the heads of the AI companies are saying, since those people are not just ‘experts’ but are really experts (without the “ “).
Which is why the most compelling evidence for these dangers comes not from outside skeptics, but from the very architects of the technology. Figures like Elon Musk (xAI/Grok) and Dario Amodei (Anthropic) have repeatedly highlighted the catastrophic risks involved. What is SUPER CRAZY is that these leaders find themselves trapped in a game-theoretic arms race, rushing headlong toward AGI partly out of a deeply ingrained fear that if they do not build it first, a competitor (such as Sam Altman’s OpenAI, who is interestingly disliked by both Musk and Amodei) will. Or China (which according to the former head of Google (Eric Schmidt, who green lit back then Google’s DeepMind that resulted in Gemini AI, and has been advising President Trump on AI) China is only around 6 months behind the leading US frontier AI models.
Those are not random internet people like me and others on this forum.
Those worries extend well beyond the heads of those AI companies.
A growing exodus of senior researchers and safety engineers have resigned from top AI labs, publicly citing grave concerns over the deprioritization of safety in favor of rapid product shipping. Furthermore, the “godfathers of AI,” including Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio (again, not random people on the web like me and others on this forum), have explicitly warned that the timeline to AGI is accelerating faster than our ability to control it. Documents circulating within the industry, such as Leopold Aschenbrenner’s widely read Situational Awareness manifesto (often associated with the “2027 AGI” timeline predictions), outline a chillingly plausible path to superintelligence within this decade, bringing with it unprecedented national security and existential threats.
I know there is a human need to downplay things (the Titanic will not sink, the iceberg just scratched it a bit and we will buff it out once we get to port), in the same way there is a human need to catastrophize things (the sky is falling, the Orange Man is bad, etc).
However, I do think AI is a real danger unlike any we have seen before.
Even if we completely avoid existential catastrophe, the immediate economic reality is stark.
I utilize (and love) AI in my daily workflow (and by AI I mean deep/advanced work across emerging markets private equity) but the writing is on the wall. From a senior vantage point in private equity, my career runway is secure (I am senior enough to survive several more years, plus I made the right life decisions for over two decades so I am better than OK), but the traditional job pipeline for most is already obsolete.
The reality is that I simply do not need analysts or associates anymore.
Deep financial modeling, market research, and portfolio analysis can be executed faster and more accurately by an LLM. It is only a matter of time before this capability moves further up the ladder and eventually reach even more senior people.
This devastation will sweep across almost the entire white-collar spectrum.
Unless a job heavily relies on physical interaction (like a plumber or a masseuse or, as one of those AI ‘greats’ said, a prostitute), anything that requires a computer or learned cognitive knowledge is fundamentally at risk.
Certain professions will inevitably build regulatory moats to protect themselves …it is highly unlikely we will allow AI politicians (congress critters will ensure they are not at risk) or AI judges anytime soon, as those in power will legislate their own survival, and certain medical practices will still legally require a human being despite an AI’s superior diagnostic accuracy.
But for the vast majority of the knowledge economy (eg, lawyers, consultants, analysts, and writers) the disruption will be absolute.
Anyways: that is a long read, and I apologize for that.
But let me say one more thing: I REALLT hope you are 100% correct and there is nothing to worry about. I genuinely hope so.
For all our sakes.
AI is a bad idea created by bad people with bad intentions and would say it was a Satanic idea that in the end will be used to destroy mankind...
I’ve read statistics that up to 80% of content on most social media platforms is AI generated. It may be somewhat obvious in videos.
“Here is an article and video trailer of the AI full length movie that has been created, using nothing but AI.”
Good luck, Hollywood! Anyway, the AI version could use better lighting.
This is wholly different from Trains, Planes and Automobiles. AI as presented is a total fraud. These data centers being pushed right now are purely being built to further our surveillance state. Doubt that at your own peril. Anyone pushing it are enemies to humanity.
Some of the boobs--I mean voices. Voices! are quite realistic.
Across the political spectrum people are so played into panic about AI and data centers today. It almost seems like another mass formation psychosis.
“I have a suspicion the plan is for humans not to survive it.”
Exactly right. The Livestock have been blinded by their own ignorance and greed. It is designed to be a good Cutting Horse to cut out Stock from the herd to be culled.
It almost seems like another mass formation psychosis.”
Well, it was about 75% successful re Covid, so why not try again, right?
AI content has ruined YouTube and is ruining Facebook. The AI content is lengthy, boring, and often of no value.
Ultimately the market for AI content consumption is human beings. Viewership of vapid AI content by human eyes will inevitably decline, followed by advertising revenue. Profitability will decline as revenue declines. The invisible hand of the market will take corrective action unless the government subsidizes AI ventures directly or indirectly.
For this reason state and local governments should not be providing economic incentives such as tax abatement, or no cost construction of infrastructure to AI companies. Let them cover the full cost of doing business. The cost to taxpayers is extremely high when government subsidizes a business and the business fails. Corporations will vacuum up incentives to build a center and will walk in a heartbeat when the center is not profitable. Cities and towns throughout the nation have empty factory and office buildings, built with government incentives and abandoned by the companies that once promised economic benefits the community never realized.
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