- 69-year-old activist Wynd Kaufman jailed after protest at OpenAI headquarters in 2025
- Protesters chained doors demanding halt to artificial superintelligence development
- Kaufman convicted of trespassing, unlawful assembly, and refusing to disperse
A 69-year-old activist has been jailed after taking part in a protest outside OpenAI's headquarters in San Francisco, in what supporters describe as the first imprisonment linked to a protest against artificial intelligence. According to a Guardian report, Wynd Kaufman, a retired teacher from Berkeley, California, surrendered to authorities on Friday after being convicted for her role in a February 2025 demonstration organised by the group StopAI. Protesters chained and locked the front doors of OpenAI's headquarters as they called for an end to the race to develop artificial superintelligence.
Kaufman refused to leave in a sit-in and was later convicted of multiple misdemeanour offences, including interfering with a business, trespassing, unlawful assembly and refusing to disperse. Sheriff's deputies cuffed her as supporters assembled outside the courthouse, calling for her release.
Kaufman has defended the protest as necessary, saying she believes the rapid development of advanced AI could pose a serious threat to humanity. She said she was prepared to go to jail to draw attention to what she sees as the dangers of the race to superintelligence.
"It's absolutely frightening and appalling that these CEOs and AI experts know the dangers, and they are pursuing it anyway. That to me is unconscionable and reprehensible," Kaufman said before she was imprisoned. Her appeal to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta's CEOs was to "regain your humanity".
Her supporters have compared her to Rosa Parks, calling her a symbol of the growing movement against AI risks. "The jury rejected [Kayfman's] necessity defence, but as the first person to go to jail over this, Wynd Kaufman could go down in history as the Rosa Parks of AI risk," said David Kreuger, a University of Montreal AI safety expert.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, however, said the verdict reinforced that protesters cannot put public safety at risk to advance their cause.
The case comes as concerns about AI safety have grown among researchers, policymakers and technology experts. More than 1,000 researchers at leading AI labs recently signed a letter warning that AI capabilities could advance faster than researchers' ability to understand or control them. AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, are racing to develop increasingly powerful systems, while the US and China compete for leadership in the technology.
Kaufman said she felt a deep sense of disappointment after her conviction because she believed people were not taking the risks seriously enough. She now sees growing public concern from prominent figures as evidence that her warnings are gaining attention.
One of her supporters, 73-year-old Dwight Ost, said the potential risks of advanced AI were too serious to ignore. "There's an existential threat that I believe in. They can't control it, and even the so-called experts don't know what it's about," he said.
Kaufman has previously spent short periods in jail for political activism on issues including nuclear disarmament and international conflicts. She now wants ordinary people to pressure AI companies to stop what she describes as a dangerous race toward superintelligence.
AI researcher Stuart Russell, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, also testified in Kaufman's defence. He said, "Wynd stood up for her beliefs and is being punished."
