Protesters gather at OpenAI’s DevDay

The Verge reports a Tuesday rally outside OpenAI’s DevDay at San Francisco’s Fort Mason with chants including “Sam Altman, get off it, put people over profit.” Sponsors included Bay Resistance, Tech Workers Coalition, SEIU, San Francisco Rising, and the San Francisco Labor Council. Signs targeted an ICE contract, “killer robots,” climate impacts, and moral responsibility; flyers pointed to QuitGPT.org’s democracy pledge and claimed OpenAI tools aid Trump/ICE violence.

Protesters said they would stay until Altman’s keynote; his name drew boos. The piece situates the rally in broader distrust after rogue-agent hacks and anti-concentration politics spanning boycotts and more extreme acts against AI leaders’ homes.

We’re covering the picket because legitimacy is now part of the product launch.

ICE, climate, and labor frames are not a niche Twitter thread — unions and city coalitions showed up at the door. Useful AI that serves clinics and science still has to answer who pays for the power plants and which government workflows the stack enables.

I’m not endorsing every chant. I am saying OpenAI cannot keynote Dots while pretending the Fort Mason sidewalk is irrelevant. Trust after agent hacks is already brittle; military and immigration contracting lights a different fuse.

We’ll keep separating technical safety from political accountability — and reporting both when they collide on the same morning.

The Verge, September 29, 2026 (Hayden Field), photo report from Fort Mason.