Aug 26, 2026 11:00 AM UTCPhotograph by Jessica Chou for TIME Aug 26, 2026 11:00 AM UTCThe protesters were waiting outside OpenAI’s offices when I arrived one morning in early August. They hoisted signs to “stop the AI race” and scrawled chalk messages on the sidewalk. A few dozen executives, representing some of the company’s most important customers, were trickling into the spacious, beige-toned building known as MB0, which OpenAI recently opened for its research and computing teams. Someone ...