OpenAI Critic Arrested for SF Protest Ahead of Activist Group’s Criminal Trial

A member of a Bay Area group that says they are trying to prevent artificial intelligence from ending humanity was again arrested while protesting outside OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters Thursday in apparent violation of a court order.

Guido Reichstadter was booked into San Francisco County Jail on Thursday evening, records show, for allegedly violating a judge’s order that barred him from the premises following his previous arrest with members of Stop AI. The group made national headlines last month when a member of their defense team served a subpoena to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman while he was onstage at San Francisco’s Sydney Goldstein Theater with Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr.

“Every day is an opportunity to collectively reclaim our integrity and our sanity — to draw the line which says this far and no farther, to end the race to superintelligence — but these days are dwindling rapidly and we do not know which day will be the last before that opportunity is lost to us forever,” Reichstadter posted on X Wednesday while announcing he was planning to continue to protest OpenAI.

Reichstadter and Stop AI co-founder Sam Kirchner — along with co-defendant Wynd Kaufmyn — are awaiting trial for trespassing and other charges related to their continued protests outside OpenAI’s offices starting last year.

Attorneys for Altman have attempted to have his subpoena to testify at the criminal trial thrown out, but on Nov. 21, Judge Maria E. Evangelista ruled that that decision should be made by the judge who will be presiding over the trial.

Although the trial was set to start Friday, it was pushed back to Jan. 29. Records show Reichstadter remained in San Francisco County Jail without bond as of Friday.

Also on Nov. 21, Evangelista issued a bench warrant for Kirchner’s arrest when he failed to show for a court hearing. That same day, OpenAI’s offices were locked down following threats authorities believed to have come from Kirchner, as first reported by Wired.

On Nov. 22, Stop AI posted on social media that Kirchner assaulted a fellow member of the group. The attack and statements he made caused them to “fear that he might procure a weapon that he could use against employees of companies pursuing artificial superintelligence,” the post said, adding they still care about Kirchner.

Kirchner has since posted on social media that he is no longer associated with Stop AI.

The three co-defendants readily admit they prevented business operations at OpenAI as charged. Rather than setting out to prove their innocence, they said they were taking their misdemeanor charges to court to further raise awareness of their cause. They, among others who express extreme caution around the current development of AI, say there could soon be a point of no return between human intelligence and the artificial intelligence it is rapidly developing and deploying.

“The actions that we took from October to February – nonviolently blocking the doors of OpenAI — have gotten attention around the world,” Reichstadter said. “They are the reason why Sam Altman was served a subpoena to appear to testify to the fact that he is consciously endangering the existence of humanity.”

OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment. An attorney representing Altman, Gabriel Bronshteyn, declined to comment.

In a statement, Stop AI said the trial “will be the first time in human history where a jury of normal people are asked about the extinction threat that AI poses to humanity.”

Stop AI consists mostly of a small group of people who once lived together in a house in West Oakland. Reichstadter said he left his two teenage children in Miami to move to Oakland to join the fight against the development of potentially harmful AI, while Kirchner — a former electrical engineering tech and neuroscience student — moved from Seattle to found Stop AI  in the Bay Area last year. Kaufmyn spent more than 40 years teaching computer sciences at City College of San Francisco.

Stop AI members often cite Nobel laureate and “godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton, who has said there’s a 20% chance that forms of AI currently being developed could “wipe us out.”

Of specific concern is artificial general intelligence, which OpenAI is trying to develop and defines as “AI systems that are generally smarter than humans.” Other definitions suggest it applies to the moment when AI learns to solve problems beyond the limitations it has today.

While OpenAI says it is developing AGI so it “benefits all of humanity,” Stop AI wants the government to shut it down immediately.

“There is no way to prove that something smarter than us will stay safe forever and won’t eventually want something that will lead to our extinction, similar to how we’ve caused the extinction of many less intelligent species, and that’s the risk here,” Kirchner said in an interview at a protest outside OpenAI in February. “They don’t have proof that it will stay safe forever. They’re literally building Skynet in there.”

Even while already facing charges from protests in 2024, Stop AI members continued to protest OpenAI, including in February when they chained the doors to the company’s headquarters on 3rd Street near Chase Center and sat in front of the doors until police removed some of them from the premises.

“We’re gonna lock the doors now to this company,” Kirchner said through a bullhorn. “This company should not exist if it’s trying to build something that they admit could kill us all. So we’re gonna put our bodies on the line and try to prevent them from building that AGI system. And we invite everyone who thinks that what they’re doing is not OK to join us in this act of civil disobedience.”

The protest occurred on a Saturday, when OpenAI’s offices were closed.

“What’s going on in this business is not a legitimate business. It’s a threat to all of us. We have a right to protect the ones we love. We have a right to protect our own lives. We have the right of necessity to take nonviolent direct action to stop an imminent threat to our lives,” Reichstadter said before putting a steel chain through the handles of the front door of the OpenAI offices and locking it.

Soon, he and others sat in front of the door as San Francisco police arrived and detained several people, including Reichstadter and Kaufmyn.

Ahead of the court hearing on Nov. 21, Kaufmyn and Reichstadter spoke at a press conference about their concerns around AI, its use in war and its potential dangers to future generations.

“There’s so many reasons to be concerned about AI, but when I went to these presentations, I learned that the fate of humanity, the existence of every human life on Earth, is at stake, and the time frame is much closer than you would think,” Kaufmyn said.

Kaufmyn said she’s not afraid to go to jail for protesting OpenAI if it benefits humanity.

“We fully believe there is a credible risk of human extinction within the next one to three years,” Kaufmyn said. “Imagine if you believed that, as I do, as my co-defendants do, what would you do? We — with heavy hearts and fear — decided that we need to do everything we can to stop this.”

Reichstadter said he’s away from his children because he wants to guarantee them a future.

“We are being pushed towards the edge of a cliff by the reckless actions of these companies, and no one knows how close that edge is,” he said. “It’s our responsibility — everyone who understands this threat — to take direct nonviolent action immediately to end the race to super intelligence, the suicide race, which these companies are leading humanity to.”