GoKawiilArtificial intelligence is losing the popularity contest in the United States, and that's bad news for some of Big Tech's power players.
The trend has implications for richly valued companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, which are both on the path to go public. It also threatens Amazon , Google , Microsoft and Meta , the so-called hyperscalers planning to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to compete for data centers to power AI.
The latest signal of negative sentiment was extreme.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was targeted at his San Francisco home last week, where prosecutors say a man threw a lit Molotov cocktail at his driveway gate. The San Francisco District Attorney said the crime was motivated by hate of AI technology.
The suspect, 20-year-old Daniel Moreno-Gama of Texas, faces charges including attempted murder. He is also accused of threatening to burn down OpenAI's headquarters.
Altman responded to the attack over the weekend, acknowledging a time of "great anxiety about AI" and called for a de-escalation of rhetoric and tactics.
"I empathize with anti-technology sentiments and clearly technology isn't always good for everyone," Altman wrote. "But overall, I believe technological progress can make the future unbelievably good, for your family and mine."