AI Executives Are Terrified About Their Own Safety

A Yahoo News report reveals that AI executives, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, are increasingly traveling with armed security after a 20-year-old activist attempted to firebomb Altman's home, but critics argue the fear is exaggerated and used to justify hoarding power and wealth, contrasting with the 10,000-plus deaths from a European heat wave that received less attention.

Here’s something to consider. A person terrified about their own safety aspires to amass power and wealth. Why? Because they are terrified about their own safety. So they hoard, and the hoard grows without limit, because it exists to offset a fear of losing control or status. And so they enter the AI market and tell everyone they are terrified about their own safety because of… AI. Sure, sure, we believe it is AI that puts the executive in danger. We also believed it was the cans when Steve Martin, standing in front of the cans, yelled “He hates these cans Stay away from the cans ” https://youtube.com/shorts/oj07Hz y hw?si=H2df-6FNnrRHh4bB To put it another way, here’s the kind of reporting I run into https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/terrified-tech-execs-traveling-armed-195630019.html . Earlier this year, the AI industry was shaken when a 20-year-old anti-AI activist named Daniel Moreno-Gama, armed with a gun and a Molotov cocktail, unsuccessfully tried to firebomb the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. No one was injured… One man, armed with one gun and one bottle of alcohol, shook the industry. Hold on, let me check the other headline https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/europes-early-heat-wave-led-spike-deaths-killed-134841091 for a minute. Heat that hit Europe exceptionally early and hard this year appears to have led to a spike in deaths, with well over 10,000 more people dying at the height of the heat wave than would normally have been expected… Well over 10,000 people dead? Yeah, ok, anyway back to the shaken AI industry, because someone could get hurt or even die. Years ago, when I was working with Yahoo executives, I couldn’t help but notice that Marissa Mayer came in as CEO with constant body guards. Was there a threat? She didn’t get body guards for other staff, because it seemed to be a perception that the threat was attached to only top success. In fact, she built a daycare for her child, and hers alone, in the Yahoo campus, and then told every employee they need to be on campus like her, all the time, while their children stay home. Always available onsite daycare, bodyguards, for her while others faced the world without them. I’m sure if she were still CEO she would say it’s the technology industry she is in, her role at the top of it, that makes her so fearful of her safety. But really we should be asking whether some people wear it as a badge and hype it up to get the attention. Credible threat intelligence never seems to be part of the story.