SAN FRANCISCO—In the months after Sam Kirchner disappeared in November, Matthew Hall searched for him on city streets where homeless live and in wooded hills where campers hide away.
Hall worried for the safety of Kirchner, an intense 27-year-old activist who had been leading sit-ins at OpenAI to protest the dangers of artificial intelligence. He feared for OpenAI’s employees, too.
The last time Hall saw him was at the spartan Oakland cottage that served as headquarters for their hard-line group, Stop AI. Kirchner, an electrical engineering technician by training, was angry, insistent that more had to be done.
“I’m done with this,” he said, according to Hall. “The ship may have sailed on nonviolence.”
