SAN FRANCISCO—On Friday, April 10 at around after 3 a.m., Daniel Alejandro Moreno-Gama, 20, of Texas threw a Molotov cocktail, which is a bottle with a flaming rag, at the exterior gate of 40-year-old Open AI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman’s Chestnut Street home in Russian Hill. The device bounced off the gate. It caused a small fire, but it was quickly put out by property security guards. No injuries were reported.
At 4:12 a.m., fire crews from the San Francisco Fire Department, who were on the scene notified the San Francisco Police Department. Authorities an incendiary device. Surveillance video captured Moreno-Gama, and a description was sent to all officers of the SFPD.
Moreno-Gama later showed up at the Open AI’s headquarters in Mission Bay on the 1,400 block of Third Street to make verbal threats to burn the building down. After 5 a.m., officers from the SFPD recognized him from the earlier incident, apprehended him.
He was officially booked into San Francisco County Jail. He is currently being held without bail. He is charged with arson, attempted murder, making criminal threats and possession or manufacturing of an incendiary or destructive device.
Altman was with his family at home at the time of the incident. He later said in a blog post that should be a de-escalation of public rhetoric surrounding artificial intelligence (AI), suggesting the attack may have been motivated by societal anxiety over the technology.
