![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/protest-megaphone-holly-copy2-e1776273534548.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The attempted firebombing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman\u2019s San Francisco home last Friday, allegedly carried out by 20-year-old Daniel Moreno-Gama, has drawn attention to two anti-AI groups with similar names: Pause AI and Stop AI. Both have condemned the violence and said the suspect is not and never was a member of their organizations.<\/p>\n
Still, the incident, in which Moreno-Gama also went to OpenAI\u2019s headquarters and tried to shatter the building\u2019s glass doors with a chair and threatened to burn the facility, surfaced his activity on Pause AI\u2019s Discord server and renewed scrutiny of Stop AI\u2019s direct actions targeting OpenAI last year.<\/p>\n
A movement built on slowing AI<\/p>\n
Pause AI, founded in Utrecht, Netherlands, in May 2023 by Joep Meindertsma, aims to halt what it calls \u201cdangerous frontier AI\u201d and staged its first protest outside Microsoft\u2019s lobbying office in Brussels. The group, whose name was inspired by an open letter from the Future of Life Institute in March 2023 (which is also now its largest single funder), has since grown into a global grassroots movement with local chapters. That includes a separate organization called Pause AI US, led by Berkeley-based Holly Elmore, who has a PhD in evolutionary biology from Harvard and previously worked at a think tank focused on wildlife animal welfare.<\/p>\n
Moreno-Gama was linked to comments on Pause AI\u2019s Discord server, including one post, dated Dec. 3, 2025, that read: \u201cWe are close to midnight, it\u2019s time to actually act.\u201d Pause AI said the suspect joined its server two years ago and posted a total of 34 messages, none of which \u201ccontained explicit calls to violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lea Suzuki\u2014San Francisco Chronicle\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Elmore told Fortune that she had been on her way to Washington, D.C., last week to finish preparing for a peaceful demonstration on Capitol Hill and meetings with members of Congress when the attempted firebombing occurred. \u201cWhen I landed, suddenly I was getting these questions about somebody who had attacked Sam Altman\u2019s house,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s been back and forth between working on something that I feel really proud and positive about, and it\u2019s just exactly the right kind of change to be making\u2014democratic change through democratic means\u2014and then having to comment on this horrible event and additionally being really smeared with a connection to this event.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The group has \u201cno reason to think that this person had much to do with us,\u201d she added, pointing out that Pause AI\u2019s stance on violence \u201chas always been incredibly clear\u201d and explicitly prohibits it. She also emphasized that the activity occurred on a public, global Discord server distinct from Pause AI US\u2019s organizing channels, and said the suspect \u201cdidn\u2019t get any further in onboarding or having any official role.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elmore added that Pause AI deliberately vets volunteers and keeps tight control over its messaging to avoid being associated with extreme views.<\/p>\n
But Nirit Weiss-Blatt, an independent researcher who has long-followed the two groups and writes the newsletter AI Panic, pointed to a 2024 documentary, Near Midnight in Suicide City, in which For Humanity podcast host John Sherman interviews Elmore, who holds up a sign reading, \u201cHumanity can\u2019t survive smarter-than-human AI.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weiss-Blatt said the film shows Elmore urging activists to understand what she describes as an urgent timeline toward potential human extinction. \u201cShe\u2019s never advocating violence, but is raising the stakes about doom,\u201d Weiss-Blatt said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen prominent AI doomers like Eliezer Yudkowsky\u2014author of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies\u2014keep insisting that human extinction is imminent, it should not be surprising when someone is driven to extreme action,\u201d she added. \u201cYoung, anxious followers, looking for purpose, can be radicalized by apocalyptic AI rhetoric, even without explicit calls for violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Mauro Lubrano, a lecturer at the University of Bath and author of Stop the Machines: The Rise of Anti-Technology Extremism, cautioned that there is a clear distinction between groups that seek to eradicate technology violently and those advocating for regulation or a pause. \u201cI think it\u2019s easy to conflate all of these groups and movements that are trying to raise awareness of some of the dangers of AI,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A break over tactics\u2014and a turn to direct action<\/p>\n
The incident at Altman\u2019s home occurred about five months after OpenAI told employees at its headquarters to shelter in place because a 27-year-old man named Sam Kirchner threatened to go to several OpenAI offices in San Francisco to \u201cmurder people,\u201d according to callers who notified police that day. Kirchner was a cofounder of Stop AI, a group he launched in 2024 with 45-year-old Guido Reichstadter, both of whom had previously been involved in Pause AI.<\/p>\n
Guido Reichstadter, a cofounder of Stop AI, at a 2022 protest for abortion rights.<\/p>\n
Drew Angerer\u2014Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cI kicked them out,\u201d said Elmore, who added the split stemmed from disagreements over tactics, with Stop AI\u2019s founders pushing for civil disobedience that would involve breaking the law\u2014something Pause AI explicitly rejects. After founding Stop AI, Reichstadter and Kirchner took part in protests targeting OpenAI, while Reichstadter also staged a hunger strike outside Anthropic\u2019s headquarters (he had a long history of civil disobedience actions, including chaining himself to a security fence and climbing to the top of a Washington, D.C., bridge in protest against the Supreme Court\u2019s decision on Roe v. Wade in 2022.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Reichstadter was booked into San Francisco County Jail in early December for allegedly violating a judge\u2019s order barring him from OpenAI premises following a previous arrest. And Stop AI previously made national headlines in November when a member of its defense team served a subpoena to Sam Altman while he was onstage at San Francisco\u2019s Sydney Goldstein Theater with Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr.<\/p>\n
But the group\u2019s momentum unraveled after cofounder Sam Kirchner disappeared following an alleged assault on one of Stop AI\u2019s leaders, Matthew Hall, during an internal dispute in which he reportedly suggested abandoning nonviolence. He is still missing.<\/p>\n
In a post yesterday on X, Stop AI wrote that both Reichstadter and Kirchner were removed from the group in 2025. The group said it \u201chas always adhered to nonviolent activism\u201d and\u00a0that \u201cthe current leadership of Stop AI is deeply committed to nonviolence in both actions and statements.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
To set the record straight about Moreno-Gama, Stop AI wrote that he had \u201cjoined the Stop AI public online forum, introduced himself, then asked, \u2018Will speaking about violence get me banned?\u2019 After he was given a firm \u2018yes,\u2019 he ceased all activities on our forum. This was several months before his alleged criminal activities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Valerie Sizemore, one of five coleaders for Stop AI, told Fortune that some of its members are now feeling anxious and worried about getting too associated with the OpenAI incident. \u201cBut personally, I think it\u2019s all the more important for the nonviolent organizing we\u2019re doing, to give people something other than violence to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The organization remains focused on its San Francisco\u2013based efforts to protest at frontier lab headquarters, Sizemore added, and also participated in a local \u201cStop the AI Race\u201d protest last month.<\/p>\n
A broader debate over AI activism\u2014and its risks<\/p>\n
Lubrano, the University of Bath lecturer, pointed out that anti-technology activism, and anti-technology extremism, has been around for a long time\u2014even as far back as the Luddites, the 19th-century English textile workers who opposed machinery and industrialization.<\/p>\n
JUSTIN TALLIS \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
For many, AI represents the sum of all fears when it comes to technology, he explained. \u201cTechnology is viewed as a system, and all parts are dependent on one another,\u201d he said. \u201cWith\u00a0AI being deployed in warfare, to monitor worker performance, to monitor people taking part in demonstrations or to ensure that they behave\u2014there\u2019s an element of this technological oligarchy wanting to control us and converging thanks to AI.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
He advised engaging with anti-AI groups rather than dismissing them as technophobes or anti-technology. \u201cThe Luddites were not against technology\u2014they were against the unmitigated introduction of technology because it was disrupting their lives. And these concerns were not heard, and eventually the Luddites turned to violence.\u201d\u00a0 Ignoring those concerns, he warned, can fuel resentment and, at the margins, lead to more extreme behavior\u2014though it would be wrong to blame acts of violence on the mere existence of such groups.<\/p>\n
Still, independent researcher Weiss-Blatt insisted that the views and actions of groups like Pause AI and Stop AI can still lead to radicalization, which can, in turn, lead to bad outcomes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe warning signs were there all along, including the November 2025 lockdown at OpenAI\u2019s offices,\u201d she said. \u201cThe real question is how long the people fueling AI panic expect to avoid responsibility for where that radicalization leads, especially for the most vulnerable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pause AI\u2019s Elmore said she believes public understanding of AI issues is likely to deepen, making it harder to conflate peaceful activism with isolated acts of violence. While the topic is still new and often viewed as a single, undifferentiated space, she expects it to become a major focus of national attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople will see it\u2019s not so easy to paint [all of us] with one brush,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
#Pause #Stop #antiAI #groups #drawing #scrutiny #Sam #Altman #attack<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The attempted firebombing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman\u2019s San Francisco home last Friday, allegedly carried…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[2504,353,8676,1134,2665,2461,3427,406,6544,2427,6763,8675,42],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3989"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3989\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}