Sam Altman confirms the Molotov cocktail throwing incident and responds to the “incendiary” New Yorker investigations

San Francisco police arrested a person on Friday after he allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail into the home of OpenAI’s Sam Altman and made threats outside his company’s headquarters.

No injuries were reported, according to OpenAI, which confirmed the incident in a statement, adding: “We greatly appreciate how quickly SFPD responded and the support the city is providing to help keep our employees safe. The person is in custody, and we are assisting law enforcement with their investigation.”

Hours later, Altman himself confirmed the incident via a personal blog post that appeared to have been triggered by the shock of the Molotov incident and his week making headlines in the wake of a bloody investigation by Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz into The New Yorker.

“I hope photos have power. Normally we try to be fairly private, but in this case I’m sharing a photo in hopes that it will discourage the next person from throwing a Molotov cocktail at our house, no matter what they think of me,” Altman wrote in the opening of the blog, which included a photo of husband Oliver Mulherin and their child. “The first person did it last night, at 3:45 a.m. Fortunately, the plane bounced off the house and no one was hurt.”

“Words have power, too,” Altman continued. “There was a controversial article about me a few days ago. Someone said to me yesterday that they thought this article came at a time of great concern about AI and that it was making things more dangerous for me. I ignored it. Now I’m up in the middle of the night and angry, and I think I’ve underestimated the power of words and narrative. This seems like a good time to address some things.”

Altman then turned his attention to “What I Believe,” some personal thoughts and more thoughts about the AI ​​industry in general, including artificial general intelligence.

He covers a lot of ground in this post, writing at the top that it won’t be “all going well” as the AI ​​industry continues to roll out its world-changing tools. As such, “Fear and anxiety about AI is justified; we are witnessing the biggest change in society in a long time, perhaps ever. We have to get the safety right, and it’s not just about fitting a model – we urgently need a society-wide response to be more resilient to new threats. This includes things like new policy to help navigate a difficult economic transition in order to reach a much better future.”

To that end, he wrote that “AI must be democratized; power cannot be concentrated,” and that it is not right for a few AI labs to make “the most important decisions about the shape of our future.” Altman also acknowledges his problems with OpenAI’s board — where the founder was fired only to be rehired after an investigation — and apologizes for his past behavior.

“I’m not proud of having handled myself poorly in a conflict with the previous board that got the company into huge disarray. I’ve made many other mistakes along the crazy path of OpenAI; I’m a flawed person in the middle of a very complex situation, trying to get a little better every year, always working toward the mission. We knew going into this how big the stakes of AI were, and that interpersonal disagreements between well-meaning people I care about would be magnified dramatically. But it’s another thing to live through these bitter conflicts,” he adds. Often having to arbitrate, the costs were high. “I’m sorry to the people I hurt, and I wish I had learned more sooner.”

However, he is “extremely proud” to now be able to carry out the company’s mission. “Against all the odds, we’ve figured out how to build extremely powerful AI, we’ve figured out how to raise enough capital to build the infrastructure needed to deliver it, we’ve figured out how to build a product and business company, we’ve figured out how to deliver reasonably secure and robust services at scale, and so much more. A lot of companies say they’re going to change the world; we’ve done it.”

His full blog post can be found here.