A 20-year-old Texas man was charged on Monday with attempted murder and attempted arson, after the authorities said he threw a Molotov cocktail-like device at the San Francisco home of Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, and threatened the company’s offices a few miles away.
The man, Daniel Moreno-Gama, also appeared to have written a document that “identified views opposed to artificial intelligence” and “discussed the purported risk A.I. poses to humanity,” according to a federal affidavit. The document included the names and addresses of other executives, investors and board members of A.I. companies, but prosecutors did not name them.
“If I am going to advocate for others to kill and commit crimes, then I must lead by example and show that I am fully sincere in my message,” Mr. Moreno-Gama wrote in the document, according to the affidavit.
As early as the summer of 2024, Instagram and Substack accounts with Mr. Moreno-Gama’s name had shared posts warning about A.I. The accounts also recommended papers and books by A.I. safety researchers.
“If we do nothing very soon we will die, I’m very sure of that,” a post on the Instagram account said in December.
In January, an essay on the Substack account discussed the “existential risk” posed by A.I. and said that the chief executives of A.I. companies “appear to lack strong morals.”
“These people are almost nothing like you,” the essay said. “They are most likely sociopathic/psychopathic and, in the case of Altman, consistently reported to be a pathological liar.”
Mr. Moreno-Gama faces both state and federal charges, including possession of an unregistered firearm. The police did not find a gun on him when he was arrested. Federal prosecutors said the attack could be treated as an act of domestic terrorism.
Mr. Moreno-Gama traveled from Texas to California this month and attacked Mr. Altman’s home on Friday, according to the federal affidavit. After throwing the explosive device at Mr. Altman’s home early Friday morning, Mr. Moreno-Gama traveled to OpenAI’s offices.
There, Mr. Moreno-Gama used a chair to hit the building’s glass doors and was approached by security officers while holding a jug of kerosene, according to the federal affidavit. The office’s security staff said that Mr. Moreno-Gama had told them he was there “to burn it down and kill anyone inside.” Shortly after, the San Francisco police arrested Mr. Moreno-Gama.
The F.B.I. said it had searched Mr. Moreno-Gama’s home in Spring, Texas, on Monday.
The 11 charges Mr. Moreno-Gama faces in California could carry a sentence of 19 years to life in prison, Brooke Jenkins, San Francisco’s district attorney, said during a news conference on Monday. Among these charges is the attempted murder of Mr. Altman.
Federal prosecutors charged Mr. Moreno-Gama with two additional crimes related to the attack on Mr. Altman’s home, said Craig Missakian, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California. The federal charges could also lead to a lengthy prison sentence.
“If the evidence shows that Mr. Moreno-Gama executed these attacks to change public policy or coerce government or other officials, we will treat this as an act of domestic terrorism,” Mr. Missakian said.
At the news conference, local officials said that a shooting near Mr. Altman’s home on Sunday appeared unrelated to the attack on Friday.
Two people, who have since been arrested, drove “past a residence when the gunfire erupted,” said Derrick Lew, chief of the San Francisco Police Department. No one was injured, he said.
“At this time, we do not have any evidence to suggest this incident was related to the case on Friday,” he said. “But both cases remain active.”
(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, accusing them of copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)
Kalley Huang is a Times reporter in San Francisco, covering Apple and the technology industry.
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