Things might be going kinetic in the backlash against data centers and AI.
On Friday, a 20-year-old suspect set on burning down OpenAI headquarters was charged and arrested following a predawn Molotov cocktail attack on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s house in the Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco.
The suspect then fled to OpenAI’s Mission Bay headquarters, where he allegedly threatened to burn down the building. Officers recognized him from surveillance footage of the residence attack and took him into custody without further incident.
The timing and tone of Altman’s response appear to underscore a deeper reality now playing out across the country: financially strained American households are increasingly pushing back against the infrastructure demands of the AI industry.
This backlash is fueled not only by soaring electricity costs but also by deep-seated fears that AI and large language models will trigger widespread job displacement. Many Americans, particularly recent graduates and white-collar workers, worry that rapid automation of cognitive and knowledge-based work will leave large segments of the labor force behind. Are we on the cusp of a new luddite revolution? While the vast majority of this pushback remains peaceful and policy-focused, the Molotov incident may be the first kinetic action in the luddite revolution. Altman himself seemed to nod to that anxiety in his post, acknowledging that “the fear and anxiety about AI is justified” and calling for societal resilience, economic transition support, and democratization so that “power cannot be too concentrated.”
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