A 69-Year-Old Retired Teacher Just Became the First Person Jailed for Protesting AI

Wynd Kaufmyn, 69, surrendered to authorities in San Francisco after a jury rejected her “necessity defense” for blockading OpenAI's headquarters — the first person jailed for protesting AI.

Wynd Kaufmyn, a 69-year-old retired teacher and engineer from Berkeley, surrendered to authorities in San Francisco on Friday — her 69th birthday — and became the first person jailed for protesting artificial intelligence. A jury convicted her in June on four counts, including trespassing, unlawful assembly, and interfering with a business, for chaining and locking the front doors of OpenAI's headquarters with her StopAI group in February 2025. She was sentenced to 14 days in jail, The Guardian reports.

At trial, Kaufmyn argued a "necessity defense" — that her actions were illegal but justified to prevent the greater harm of artificial superintelligence. UC Berkeley AI professor Stuart Russell testified, comparing the industry's headlong rush to the Titanic steaming toward an iceberg. The jury didn't buy it. "It's these tech CEOs that are endangering public safety," she told The San Francisco Standard before surrendering. "I'm not the one that should be in jail."

Supporters have dubbed her "the Rosa Parks of AI risk," and San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins called the verdict "a resounding message rejecting the notion that protesters can endanger public safety as a means to an end." The case lands as frontier AI labs race toward IPO valuations in the trillions, more than a thousand researchers warn that capability development could "accelerate beyond our ability to understand or control," and Senator Bernie Sanders demands a pause on AI development.