Should we be boycotting ChatGPT?

8:58Rutger Bregman:So you say they've decided to win at all costs. And they've decided, haven't they, that the guy to help them do that is in the White House right now, Donald Trump.

9:06unknown:Yep.

9:07Rutger Bregman:OpenAI has actively supported him, haven't they? Given him a lot of money. Yeah.

9:11unknown:And obviously, I mean, we've seen this from a lot of companies, right? We've seen the law firms caving in. We've seen the universities caving in. We've seen media networks bending the knee, the tech oligarchs again and again and again. And OpenAI has done the very same thing. But they've been very, very ambitious about it. So Greg Brockman and his wife, Greg Brockman is the president of OpenAI, donated$25 million to MAGA Inc., which is Donald Trump's biggest super PAC. That made them the single largest individual donors of the last cycle.

9:48Rutger Bregman:And what have the government already been using their software for?

9:51unknown:A lot of people don't know that their friendly chatbot, ChatGPT, has embedded itself into the authoritarian infrastructure of the Trump administration. So, for example, the deportation rates organized by ICE. Well, the people who do that have been screened by ChetGPT. OpenAI actually launched a program called OpenAI for Government and gave ChetGPT for$1 to every federal agency. It is really powering the repressive infrastructure of this administration.

10:26Rutger Bregman:Breaking news on discussions between Anthropic, the AI company, and the Pentagon over military use of the company's AI. Now, Pentagon officials yesterday... And of course, ChatGPT isn't the only player in this AI race, and it's not alone in seeking lucrative contracts with the Pentagon. But one of their rivals did take a different approach, didn't they?

10:46unknown:There was a big fight with Anthropic, one of their main competitors behind the model Claude. And Anthropic had just refused to give the Pentagon basically killer robots and mass surveillance.

11:01Rutger Bregman:Well, so essentially, Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei wanted to prevent the Pentagon from using its technology with autonomous weapons or for the mass surveillance of Americans.

11:12unknown:Our leaning forward in deploying our models with the military was done because we believe in this country. We believe in defeating our autocratic adversaries. We believe in defending America. The red lines we have drawn, we drew because we believe that crossing those red lines is contrary to American values. And we wanted to stand up for American values. They were like, yes, this is a very powerful technology. And yes, they use it for all kinds of things, including, you know, bombing Iran right now. But Anthropic was drawing a line. We exercised our classic First Amendment rights to speak up and disagree with the government.

11:55unknown:Disagreeing with the government is the most American thing in the world. They were saying like, this is such an extremely powerful technology that the law is just not up to date. It is not up to speed, you know. And if we give it to you in its current form with all its capabilities, then you will be able to do things that no king or queen or emperor or prime minister has ever been able to do. Like it will grant you a level of control and power that is just not fit for a democracy, basically. So that was a good thing.

12:28Rutger Bregman:The president weighing in on social media. Trump said, quote, the United States of America will never allow a radical left woke company to dictate how our great military fights and wins wars. That decision belongs to your commander in chief.

12:45unknown:I'm not in the business of selling anthropic shares or whatever. They have many problems as well. They're certainly not saints.

12:53Rutger Bregman:Yeah.

12:53unknown:But this is a good thing.

12:54Rutger Bregman:Yeah. But I mean, they found their backbone, didn't they, on this particular issue. Peter Hegseth, the Secretary of War, didn't take it well. He threw his toys out of the pram. He labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk, which is a measure that is usually only applied to companies that are deemed like a major national security risk, often Chinese companies. It's never been used against an American company before. And as a result, Anthropic are now suing the U.S. Defense Department over that decision.

13:19unknown:Yeah, but then what happened is that basically OpenAI swooped in, Sam Elkman swooped in and announced that they made this secret deal.

13:29Rutger Bregman:Now, hours after the Trump administration ditched Anthropic over the dispute, OpenAI swooped in and struck its own deal with the Pentagon. Now the details of that agreement appear to be changing. After facing backlash...

13:42unknown:It was such a classic Sam Elkman move. I honestly think we should start calling him Scam Elkman. Because he announced it by saying like, hey, we actually got the deal. No mass surveillance, no killer robots. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that CEO Sam Altman defended his decision on an all-staff call to allow defense officials to use the company's AI tools for classified work. It comes after he announced a revision to the deal to make sure OpenAI's technology would not be used for mass surveillance. And last night, he posted on social media that announcing Friday's deal so quickly was, in his words, opportunistic and sloppy.

14:23unknown:But then, you know, when the legal experts started looking at the language that was used, they were like, yeah, sorry, but the Pentagon will still be able to do whatever they want with this.

14:41Rutger Bregman:You know, you make a very convincing argument for why we should boycott OpenAI and chat GPT. but what is it that you exactly want us to do is it as simple as it sounds yeah yeah go to

14:54unknown:chatgpt.com unsubscribe download your data then delete everything it's as simple as that

15:02Rutger Bregman:oh and and tell everyone about it right okay okay but i mean come on to boycotts really work because in my lifetime i've been encouraged to boycott all sorts of things yeah yeah mcdonald's avocados from Israel and it never seems to lead to any kind of change.

15:21unknown:So here's where it gets really interesting. What history has taught me is that the most effective consumer boycotts have two things in common. One, they are really targeted. So it's not smart to say like, oh, let's boycott all LLMs or something like that. Scott Galloway, an American author, launched something called Resist and Unsubscribe. And he said, unsubscribe from all big tech companies. And I think that's nice and commendable, but it's not going to be effective. It's got to be really targeted, and it's got to be targeted at a vulnerable company organization. So take the Montgomery bus boycott of the civil rights era.

16:02unknown:Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the bus. Then Martin Luther King joined the boycott, and it became extremely effective. You know, it broke the back of segregated transit across the American South. They chose one bus company and they said, you know, let's break it down, basically. Let's bankrupt it. The other thing that is absolutely crucial is boycotts, effective boycotts are easy. So if it's a really difficult boycott to join, like I ask you to, you know, unsubscribe from your favorite podcast. It's going to be hard for you, right? Or maybe a good example is delete Facebook as well.

16:44unknown:I think that was 2018 when a lot of people said, let's delete Facebook. And that was pretty unsuccessful. Mark Zuckerberg later said that they barely saw it in the numbers.

16:55Rutger Bregman:Really?

16:55unknown:And I think, again, the reason is because Facebook was pretty crucial infrastructure for a lot of people. Now, the wonderful thing about deleting ChatGPT is that it is insanely easy. This is the easiest boycott ever. so the alternatives are great they're excellent some would even say they're better you've got great european alternatives like le chat from mistral they're open source models like this this race is really intense and yeah you can just pick any of the alternatives i don't i basically don't care what or maybe you don't want to use ai at all that's fine as long as you delete chat gpt

17:32Rutger Bregman:then i'm happy but what makes you think that enough people are going to do this to really hit OpenAI where it hurts. It's already happening.

17:40unknown:It's already happening.

17:41Rutger Bregman:But when I clicked on the QuitChatGPT website just now, it said 4 million people have already signed up. But OpenAI say that 900 million people use ChatGPT every week.

17:53unknown:I can assure you that this is already a board conversation at OpenAI.

17:58Rutger Bregman:Really? They're panicking?

18:00unknown:Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But there are two main mechanisms here. One is the consumer base. So revenue, that is important, right? They got to show that they make money because there's an enormous multiplier on the valuation of OpenAI.

18:16Rutger Bregman:And they don't make any money yet, right? They're hugely in the red.

18:19unknown:Well, they spend much more than they make, yes. So they spend like$3 for every dollar that they make, which is, I mean, that's the standard playbook with startups and Silicon Valley.

18:30Rutger Bregman:Amazon didn't make money for decades, did it?

18:32unknown:Yeah, and I think Uber is still not making money. which is kind of ironic. I think by the time it starts making money, we will have self-driving cars everywhere. But that is really what makes this company so fragile, that it has this enormous multiplier on its valuation. So if you take away 5 % of its subscriber base, there's like a 50x, 60x multiplier in terms of how much damage it does to the valuation. Like investors are watching this race like hawks and they're really wondering, who's going to win? Is it Google? Is it going to be anthropic? Is it going to be XAI? Or is it going to be OpenAI?

19:10Rutger Bregman:It's still valued at$840 billion, though.

19:13unknown:Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But I promise you, we can take this whole company down, and it will be one of the great events of 2026.

19:22Rutger Bregman:And you say that they're likely discussing this at a board level.

19:26unknown:Yeah, yeah. And that's also because of the second mechanism, the employees. So what's the most important thing in this race? Obviously, it's compute. It is energy that you feed to the machine. But it is also the talent. It's the employees. There are not many people. I'm certainly not one of them, you know, who are able to improve the algorithms. These people earn an enormous amount of money.

19:51Rutger Bregman:The salaries are insane, aren't they?

19:53unknown:Absolutely insane.

19:54Rutger Bregman:Tens of millions of dollars a year. Yes, yes.

19:57unknown:And you know what? It turns out that after you earn a certain amount of money, you know, money doesn't really matter anymore. And there's a lot of nerds here, you know, who...

20:05Rutger Bregman:What? And you think they want to be a good guy as well as a rich guy?

20:08unknown:Some people are like generally bad guys. They don't give a damn. They're probably already working for Musk or Zuckerberg. But OpenAI is an interesting company because Mr. Scam Elpman has been really effective at continuously giving his employees the feeling that he really cares about humanity, that he really cares about AI safety. I mean, that was, as I said, that was the pitch since 2015. I mean, a lot of the skeptics have already left. They've left to start other companies. But I think there are still quite a few, maybe a little gullible people there who have good hearts, but are kind of like, I don't want to get into politics.

20:47unknown:And I'd rather just look Sam into his eyes and he seems like a nice guy. And can I just make awesome software, please? And I think what QuitGPT has been really good at in the last couple of weeks is getting at those people.

21:04Rutger Bregman:And you think they're lobbying Sam Altman?

21:06unknown:No, I think they're wondering about whether they should quit their job and join another AI lab. And like the talent is the gold in this race. It is absolutely essential. And if OpenAI starts losing talent, I mean, that will damage their valuation immensely as well. So what then finally is important to keep in mind is that there's no big parent company behind OpenAI. So there's no meta, there's no Google behind it. It is just OpenAI and huge loans. I think this boycott could honestly take the whole company down.

21:38Rutger Bregman:And we have actually already seen a senior executive at OpenAI quit over this. A woman called Caitlin Kalinowski, who was a hardware exec, wrote kind of in a resignation tweet, surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got. But do you actually, do you want this company to be taken down? Or do you want them to listen and change course? Because Sam Altman, if he was sitting here, he would say, Rutger, I am listening.

22:07unknown:Yes.

22:08Rutger Bregman:And I think he would.

22:10unknown:I would like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that again. Like, I mean, he's done that for a decade, honestly.

22:16Rutger Bregman:But let's put his point of view across. So he posted on X, you know, for the avoidance of doubt, the department understands that open AI, chat GPT should not be used for deliberate tracking, surveillance, or monitoring of US persons or nationals. He said he's been reassured that chat GPT will not be used by the Department of War Intelligence Agency, so the NSA. And he says, if I received what I believed was an unconstitutional order, of course, I would rather go to jail than follow that order.

22:44unknown:Look, I'm a guy who believes in second chances. I believe in third chances. Heck, I believe in like a 10th chance or a 15th chance. And I'm not an idiot either. You know, at some point you see the pattern. And the thing with OpenAI is we have a decade of evidence now of how this guy operates. Look at incredible investigative journalism projects like the OpenAI files. And it's just a long, long list of lies and deceit.

23:19Rutger Bregman:Coming up, why stop at ChatGPT? Should we be boycotting other AI companies too?

23:33Rutger Bregman:Scotland has natural beauty in abundance, but beyond the stunning landscapes, it's a fertile ground to build, grow and succeed, filled with people who are ready to push boundaries in the pursuit of breakthrough ideas. That's why today, Scotland is a dynamic hub of opportunity across growth sectors, from clean energy and life sciences to digital technology and space innovation. Scotland, for the head, heart and the spirit. Discover more at theguardian.com forward slash brand Scotland.

24:00unknown:This message was paid for by Brand Scotland.

24:08Rutger Bregman:All right, and I think a lot of people will be listening and they'll be very persuaded by the arguments that you're making. Okay, great. So go and delete it. Do it now. Stop the podcast and delete it. What I am kind of struggling to understand is why, I know that you've just outlined why Sam Altman is a terrible human being and we can't trust him. But you know, there is so, all of these companies, aren't they all trashing the environment, wiping out whole industries, stealing people's work, spreading misinformation, making us all more stupid?

24:41unknown:shouldn't we just get off all of them the last time i had the honor of being on today in focus um we talked about my book moral ambition which is about how you can use your talent to make the world a much better place and for me yeah pragmatism has always been an incredibly important ingredient in that like we don't need more moral purity we want to be actually effective in changing the world. So if people want to, I don't know, delete their Facebook, cancel their Amazon Prime subscription, I think that's all great. But I think we should not be naive and expect that a lot of people will do the same thing.

25:17unknown:But with QuitGPT, we have an extraordinary historic opportunity, an actually effective consumer boycott that may take a company down and that will send a signal to all of Silicon Valley, to boardrooms everywhere, you could be next. So let me give you one analogy of the history of warfare. I'm sure you're familiar with Genghis Khan and that he wasn't, you know, the nicest guy. So the way he approached warfare is that he would go to a city, lay siege to it, and then murder everyone, basically, raise the city to the ground. and then he would go to the next city and he would say, hey, see what we did there?

26:00unknown:You don't want that happening, right? I think that's basically how we should approach big tech. It's much more effective to be targeted. And OpenAI is the perfect target. We can do it. We can take it down. So let's do it.

26:17Rutger Bregman:That was Rutger Bregman. My thanks as ever to him. You can read his comment piece on why you should quit ChatGPT at theguardian.com. And that is all for today. This episode was produced by Hannah Ardan and Tom Glasser and presented by me, Helen Pitt. Sound design was by Brian McNamara and the executive producer was Elizabeth Kassin. Lucy Hoff will be back in your feeds later today with the latest.

26:47Rutger Bregman:This is The Guardian.

26:58Rutger Bregman:Scotland has natural beauty in abundance, but beyond the stunning landscapes, it's a fertile ground to build, grow and succeed, filled with people who are ready to push boundaries in the pursuit of breakthrough ideas. That's why today, Scotland is a dynamic hub of opportunity across growth sectors, from clean energy and life sciences to digital technology and space innovation. Scotland, for the head, heart and the spirit. Discover more at theguardian.com forward slash brand Scotland. This message was paid for by Brand Scotland.

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