I know of a semiconductor company that pulled their business account out of OpenAI chatgpt and transitioned to Anthropic's Claude. Making a big stink works.
Wow-as an editor of chemistry research documents, this was a read that needed some more punctuation and breaths. Points well said, and automatically fired like a weapon, this is a piece of work I’ll revisit.
Scott — this is a compelling narrative, but I think there’s a deeper structural dynamic underneath what you’re describing.
What you frame as a moral contrast between Sam Altman and Dario Amodei may actually be the early formation of competing AI governance models rather than a simple hero/villain story.
Historically, every transformative infrastructure layer eventually produces three archetypes:
Accelerationists — scale the technology as quickly as possible (OpenAI-style).
Constraint architects embed guardrails and safety frameworks (Anthropic-style).
State integrators align the technology with geopolitical power structures.
What’s fascinating right now is that AI is the first infrastructure layer in history where the private sector is negotiating sovereignty with governments in real time.
Anthropic refusing certain defense applications isn’t just ethics — it’s strategic positioning around legitimacy.
OpenAI doing the deal may not simply be opportunism—it may be a calculation that the company that becomes indispensable to state infrastructure becomes impossible to regulate.
We saw similar patterns with:
Microsoft and operating systems
Google and search
Amazon and cloud
But AI is different because the surface area of influence is human cognition itself.
That’s why your boycott thesis is interesting — but I’m not convinced consumer pressure will be the dominant force.
Infrastructure technologies rarely get governed by consumer sentiment. They get governed by dependency.
The more interesting question might be
Which AI company becomes so deeply embedded in economic and institutional systems that opting out becomes impossible?
Because historically, that’s the player that wins.
I'm curious how you see this playing out over the next five years—especially if the real competition isn’t OpenAI vs. Anthropic, but private AI ecosystems vs. nation-state AI ecosystems.
Competition is often demonized as it is the lazy thinker's knee jerk. Context and a detailed explanation requires thought, evidence, and a rational explanation plus a bit of persuasion.
None of that exists here.
Sure OpenAI choked on their sanctimonious do gooder B Corp nonsense but the real question is -- How is the product received by the market?
This effort -- resist and unsubscribe -- is low brow nonsense.
It is completely fair to judge one by their associations, voluntary associations in particular.
Never has there been a more out of touch and intellectually compromised politician than Dem Senate Candidate Talarico. Just read what the man has said.
Prof G is lending that moron his own imprimatur and thereby compromising/degrading his own brand and trying to upgrade Talarico's. Fool's mission.
Normally, this would be embarassing but normal has gone into the Witness Protection Program.
AI is phantom technology using symbols. The entire field is false. Why would we categorize the participants ideologically when the underlying tech is illusory?
I saw chatGPT as a total breakthrough in tools that impact our lives. I was right, just not in the way I thought I would be. I’ve unsubscribed and I won’t be going back. I care about humanity.
Final thought, unsubscribing opens your mind. If even briefly we look at alternatives, it’s more than we normally do. It breaks patterns. Nice
The ickiness of Altman had been accumulating. He is the poster child for enshittification at the geopolitical level. A very wily Captain Enshitt on the USS/HMS 'ROI supersedes humanity'. Excellent article. I downloaded Claude several days ago.
I'm 60-something and just switched from ChatGPT to Claude, which is basically the AI equivalent of leaving your wife for someone who actually listens. Except in this case, my wife approves.
Easiest breakup I've ever had. ChatGPT didn't cry, didn't ask why, didn't drunk-text me at 2 a.m. So already better than most of my relationships.
Sam Altman says it takes 20 years of energy to train a human to think critically. Nothing says "I should be trusted with the future of humanity" like a guy who looks at a child and sees a bad return on electricity.
OpenAI is being sued by a Tumbler Ridge, BC, family whose daughter survived a mass shooter there. We don’t have mass shootings like that in Canada , but clearly we are not immune. The shooter apparently used ChatGPT to figure things out, and OpenAI neglected to alert authorities because it didn’t meet their thresholds. Canadian law makers will be coming down hard on OpenAI as a result!
> the virus that’s infected Big Tech: For them, ROI supersedes humanity.
This virus the infected the whole America and other capitalistic societies. Bezos, Musk, Ellison, Waltons and the entire Forbes Billionaires list made their fortunes on suffering of other people and it continues right now.
We are here and all of our choices (or non-choices), make a difference. Together, the difference we make, it's exponential brothers and sisters. Together, we can move the world.
I'm glad to hear someone finally take Altman to task for his betrayal of OpenAI's founding mission. People in the media have been far too willing to reiterate the narrative of Altman "realizing" he was going to need a lot more money to fund OpenAI's "research". Bullshit.
It was OpenAI that began the AI arms race by suddenly dropping ChatGPT on an unsuspecting world. Other companies had been taking a more cautious approach, but caution was tossed out the window when everyone suddenly had to scramble like mad to remain competitive. Of course, you expect such behavior from for-profit companies. That's competition and the profit motive doing its thing.
But from an organization which began life pledging to better humanity, such a move was immensely irresponsible and hubristic. It looked like a classic bait-and-switch, and Elon Musk even looked like the responsible one for a brief moment by calling it out.
Altman's appearances before Congress, ostensibly to promote the need for regulation of AI, always carried a distinct whiff of self-promotion. In hindsight, it's obvious what he was doing. He's nothing but an ambitious entrepreneur whose grandiose talk amounts to a glorified sales pitch.
The math on the Impact Calculator is Important to consider . One cancelled $20/month subscription costs OpenAI $240 in annual revenue and $10k in valuation at their current multiple. A decent social network compounds that to six figures. Consumer action usually fails because it's diffuse. Everyone boycotts a little, no one feels the pain. OpenAI is vulnerable with market share down from 69% to 45% and projected $14B loss in 2026. The question is whether the movement maintains focus or fragments.
There are root elements to our societies chaos. Transportation is the Keystone of Civilization, origin unknown look at history. Our communities are so fractured it is beyond belief. Bloom (modular community-owned transportation systems) provide “Advanced Community Ridesharing” with an instant Day 1 valuation x’s 6 respectively.. there are so many amplifications socially, home economically, community wealth in $Rational Capital forms
Uber pirated my 1:1 demand/responsive door to door urban playbook. Bloom (modular community-owned transportation systems) are even vetted by USAID for end-of-war zones. Did you know it’s $5,000 to promote a comment to you on X?
I know of a semiconductor company that pulled their business account out of OpenAI chatgpt and transitioned to Anthropic's Claude. Making a big stink works.
I really admire you Scott. You could choose to sit this one out but instead choosing to speak up and save this democracy!
Wow-as an editor of chemistry research documents, this was a read that needed some more punctuation and breaths. Points well said, and automatically fired like a weapon, this is a piece of work I’ll revisit.
Thank you.
Scott — this is a compelling narrative, but I think there’s a deeper structural dynamic underneath what you’re describing.
What you frame as a moral contrast between Sam Altman and Dario Amodei may actually be the early formation of competing AI governance models rather than a simple hero/villain story.
Historically, every transformative infrastructure layer eventually produces three archetypes:
Accelerationists — scale the technology as quickly as possible (OpenAI-style).
Constraint architects embed guardrails and safety frameworks (Anthropic-style).
State integrators align the technology with geopolitical power structures.
What’s fascinating right now is that AI is the first infrastructure layer in history where the private sector is negotiating sovereignty with governments in real time.
Anthropic refusing certain defense applications isn’t just ethics — it’s strategic positioning around legitimacy.
OpenAI doing the deal may not simply be opportunism—it may be a calculation that the company that becomes indispensable to state infrastructure becomes impossible to regulate.
We saw similar patterns with:
Microsoft and operating systems
Google and search
Amazon and cloud
But AI is different because the surface area of influence is human cognition itself.
That’s why your boycott thesis is interesting — but I’m not convinced consumer pressure will be the dominant force.
Infrastructure technologies rarely get governed by consumer sentiment. They get governed by dependency.
The more interesting question might be
Which AI company becomes so deeply embedded in economic and institutional systems that opting out becomes impossible?
Because historically, that’s the player that wins.
I'm curious how you see this playing out over the next five years—especially if the real competition isn’t OpenAI vs. Anthropic, but private AI ecosystems vs. nation-state AI ecosystems.
Great response. True second level thinking. Unfortunately, Scott is allowing his emotions to influence his logic.
Lol, That's quite alright. He's human, and I prefer seeing him express himself as only he can.
Smart comment.
Competition is often demonized as it is the lazy thinker's knee jerk. Context and a detailed explanation requires thought, evidence, and a rational explanation plus a bit of persuasion.
None of that exists here.
Sure OpenAI choked on their sanctimonious do gooder B Corp nonsense but the real question is -- How is the product received by the market?
This effort -- resist and unsubscribe -- is low brow nonsense.
Do you believe that god is nonbinary as talarico does? Or that there are six genders? And that whiteness is a virus?
It is completely fair to judge one by their associations, voluntary associations in particular.
Never has there been a more out of touch and intellectually compromised politician than Dem Senate Candidate Talarico. Just read what the man has said.
Prof G is lending that moron his own imprimatur and thereby compromising/degrading his own brand and trying to upgrade Talarico's. Fool's mission.
Normally, this would be embarassing but normal has gone into the Witness Protection Program.
I always appreciate your writing, but this piece hit especially hard. Thank you Scott.
AI is phantom technology using symbols. The entire field is false. Why would we categorize the participants ideologically when the underlying tech is illusory?
https://substack.com/@eventperception/p-182707220
I saw chatGPT as a total breakthrough in tools that impact our lives. I was right, just not in the way I thought I would be. I’ve unsubscribed and I won’t be going back. I care about humanity.
Final thought, unsubscribing opens your mind. If even briefly we look at alternatives, it’s more than we normally do. It breaks patterns. Nice
Dream on whilst pissing in the ocean and expecting the ocean to respond. Good luck with that.
The ickiness of Altman had been accumulating. He is the poster child for enshittification at the geopolitical level. A very wily Captain Enshitt on the USS/HMS 'ROI supersedes humanity'. Excellent article. I downloaded Claude several days ago.
I'm 60-something and just switched from ChatGPT to Claude, which is basically the AI equivalent of leaving your wife for someone who actually listens. Except in this case, my wife approves.
Easiest breakup I've ever had. ChatGPT didn't cry, didn't ask why, didn't drunk-text me at 2 a.m. So already better than most of my relationships.
Sam Altman says it takes 20 years of energy to train a human to think critically. Nothing says "I should be trusted with the future of humanity" like a guy who looks at a child and sees a bad return on electricity.
OpenAI is being sued by a Tumbler Ridge, BC, family whose daughter survived a mass shooter there. We don’t have mass shootings like that in Canada , but clearly we are not immune. The shooter apparently used ChatGPT to figure things out, and OpenAI neglected to alert authorities because it didn’t meet their thresholds. Canadian law makers will be coming down hard on OpenAI as a result!
> the virus that’s infected Big Tech: For them, ROI supersedes humanity.
This virus the infected the whole America and other capitalistic societies. Bezos, Musk, Ellison, Waltons and the entire Forbes Billionaires list made their fortunes on suffering of other people and it continues right now.
Dario Amodei said no to autonomous weapons and gained $150 billion. Sam Altman said yes and got Pete Hegseth. To each his own.
We are here and all of our choices (or non-choices), make a difference. Together, the difference we make, it's exponential brothers and sisters. Together, we can move the world.
I'm glad to hear someone finally take Altman to task for his betrayal of OpenAI's founding mission. People in the media have been far too willing to reiterate the narrative of Altman "realizing" he was going to need a lot more money to fund OpenAI's "research". Bullshit.
It was OpenAI that began the AI arms race by suddenly dropping ChatGPT on an unsuspecting world. Other companies had been taking a more cautious approach, but caution was tossed out the window when everyone suddenly had to scramble like mad to remain competitive. Of course, you expect such behavior from for-profit companies. That's competition and the profit motive doing its thing.
But from an organization which began life pledging to better humanity, such a move was immensely irresponsible and hubristic. It looked like a classic bait-and-switch, and Elon Musk even looked like the responsible one for a brief moment by calling it out.
Altman's appearances before Congress, ostensibly to promote the need for regulation of AI, always carried a distinct whiff of self-promotion. In hindsight, it's obvious what he was doing. He's nothing but an ambitious entrepreneur whose grandiose talk amounts to a glorified sales pitch.
To hell with him.
The math on the Impact Calculator is Important to consider . One cancelled $20/month subscription costs OpenAI $240 in annual revenue and $10k in valuation at their current multiple. A decent social network compounds that to six figures. Consumer action usually fails because it's diffuse. Everyone boycotts a little, no one feels the pain. OpenAI is vulnerable with market share down from 69% to 45% and projected $14B loss in 2026. The question is whether the movement maintains focus or fragments.
There are root elements to our societies chaos. Transportation is the Keystone of Civilization, origin unknown look at history. Our communities are so fractured it is beyond belief. Bloom (modular community-owned transportation systems) provide “Advanced Community Ridesharing” with an instant Day 1 valuation x’s 6 respectively.. there are so many amplifications socially, home economically, community wealth in $Rational Capital forms
Uber pirated my 1:1 demand/responsive door to door urban playbook. Bloom (modular community-owned transportation systems) are even vetted by USAID for end-of-war zones. Did you know it’s $5,000 to promote a comment to you on X?
Joy & Balance
Allen