March 5, 2026

One interesting idea I thought of recently: OpenAI backtracking on their "commitment to humanity" and partnering with the Pentagon could actually lead to the explosion of the AI industry. That might seem exaggerated, and I think it is, but! Hear me out....

ChatGPT has been the number 1 app on the app-stores for a couple years now. That surprised me for a while when I found out. Until now... Where Claude overtook chatGPT following Sam Altman's announcement that they would partner with the Pentagon and basically give unfettered access to their models with no oversight or responsibility. Record amounts of uninstalls followed.

Which is good! I think its very positive from an economic POV that the consumers still have common sense that automation requires responsibility and oversight. Because when companies don't have the sense that there are repercussions to poor ethical decisions, we lose morals for profits. If you ever meet me in person, you know I am incredibly outspoken about data privacy and ethics in computing. So this is a green flag in a sea of red. A hope in the darkness that is reports of the Meta Rayban glasses being able to skip two-party consent recording laws. And boy am I grabbing on and waving that flag high.

Now, back to the topic at hand. I talked a bit about the public trust of automation AI before. And I think this represents a big step in the wrong direction for the market. For the common person, ChatGPT is synonymous with LLMs is synonymous with AI. People say "just ask chat" even when they aren't streaming. So for chatGPT to be not only associated with a government that is rapidly losing public support, but to also somewhat be perceived as a backstabbing, greedy company because of the way they handled the announcement, is a huge blow to the technologies as a whole. A volatile market gets hit with a shock like this, and potentially the house of cards starts to fall one by one.