Sam Altman Just Triggered A Massive AI Backlash — Was He Wrong?

So the internet is currently outraged at the recent comment that Sam Alman made. But is it justified? Let's get into this. So Sam Alman in a recent interview said that we see a future where intelligence is a utility like electricity or water and people will buy it from us on a meter. Now before I actually add the wider context to this actual clip, it must be understood that you need to watch this to see the incredible reactions. And when I say incredible, I don't mean incredibly good reactions that the Twitter sphere is giving. And once again, this has gone extraordinarily viable with over 25 million views in over 20 to 48 hours. And this just goes to show how crazy things can get when there is attention on a situation. So let's take a look at this viral clip and see what was said. — Fundamentally, our business and I think the business of every other model provider is going to look like selling tokens. You know, they may come from bigger or smaller models, which makes them more or less expensive. They may use more or less reasoning, which also makes them more or less expensive. They may be running all the time in the background trying to help you out. Uh they may run only when you need them if you want to pay less. They may work super hard, you know, spend tens of millions, hundreds of millions of someday billions of dollars on a single problem, right? — That's really valuable. But we see a future where intelligence is a utility like electricity or water and people buy it from us um on a meter and use it for whatever they want to use it for. The demand that we see for that seems like it's going to continue to just go like this. And if we don't have enough, we either can't sell it — or the price gets really high and it, you know, kind of goes to rich people or society makes a bunch of sort of central planning decisions that I think almost always go badly about, you know, we're going to use our limited compute supply for this and not that. So the best thing to me throughout all the history of capitalism, innovation, whatever you want, is to just flood the market. — Yeah. So you can see Kyrie Iving says F which stands for F out of here. Someone else also says we stole all your knowledge and art and we're now going to put it on a meter and sell it back to you. You're welcome. Someone else also says a proper society would have thrown this guy in a pit full of spikes 3 years ago. 13,000 retweets, 120,000 likes, 1. 6 million views. And lastly, the another one that I'm going to quote is someone saying, "I'm not even remotely interested in Sammon's vision of the future. I'm hoping Open AI crashes and burns. " So, I think it's clear to say that the public reaction and sentiment towards this statement from Sam Alman on the future of intelligence as a commodity isn't as great as he would have hoped. I think you have to understand that the way someone was framing this was that look intelligence is going to be cheap, you know, relatively affordable and abundant and saying that it's just going to be a meter and you're going to be able to buy it from us did not come off as he would have hoped. And instead, it came off as extraordinarily dystopian. And I'm going to explain to you guys why. Because of course, for those of us who watch this kind of content, when we're seeing comments like, "Hope you crash and burn, throw this guy in a pit, stolen knowledge, we're going to sell it all back to you. " It may be a little bit confusing if you don't look at the other perspectives because the last time this actually happened, I remember a lot of people wondering why on earth are people even having this reaction. So, one of the first reasons that people have this reaction is because the point is that, you know, on the surface it looks fine, but electricity doesn't have one private company controlling it. Utilities are heavily regulated, often governmentowned or subsidized with price caps and universal access rules. And Sam Olman is describing a privately controlled monopoly on cognition and intelligence. And that is a very different power dynamic because of course if that was there then of course that is going to be pretty terrible for everyone. Not only that the from us part is doing a lot of work. He didn't say that intelligence will be a complete utility. He said that people would buy it from us okay from us on a meter. Okay. And that's OpenAI positioning itself as the sole supplier of a basic necessity, which is exactly what antitrust law is designed to prevent with things like water and power. When you've got him saying, "You guys are going to buy it from us," it just seems like this guy is hoarding the water at the well. And of course, that's not really a good scenario. Now, I think this is tonedeaf because if you haven't been made aware, electricity bills are already insane. And do you know what is actually you know causing those electricity bills to increase? Well, would you look at that? It is AI data centers. And I mean this is why people are completely frustrated because electricity prices apparently jumped 6. 9% in 2025. Goldman Sachs said that data centers actually accounted for 40% of electricity demand growth. And this

isn't like a minor footnote. This is the dominant driver of price increases. and in areas near data centers are up around 267% more than 5 years ago and that you know cost is actually being directly passed on to consumers. So you have to understand that like when people are saying that oh god another you know basic utility my utilities are already going up and you want to actually charge us another utility when the entire thing you're creating is already making my existing utilities more expensive it's just not really a good look and I mean Samman himself has already acknowledged that so when he says people will buy intelligence like electricity to a room of people whose electricity bills may already be rising because of his industry this lands as well as is about an oil exec saying energy should be cheap and as accessible as petrol during a fuel crisis. I mean when you think about it the irony is pretty insane. And the thing is that when we look at intelligence versus things like energy and electricity with electricity you know a kilowatt from a coal or soul solar farm or like a nuclear reactor will do exactly the same thing when it hits your kettle. They don't really care where it came from. No single company can say our electricity works differently to theirs. It's a true commodity. But you know AI is the complete opposite of that. When you buy tokens from OpenAI, they are, you know, in a specific way. GPT4, GPT5, they're going to say certain things that Claude won't and vice versa. And those output reflects whoever designed the models, values, training, and oral HF choices. So, OpenAI can change what the model does overnight with choices. They can raise prices. They can to throttle access or shut it down entirely. There's no regulatory body setting a standard unit of intelligence, which they probably should. So, saying that, look, this is just like electricity. you're going to be able to buy it. It's not really the same. And of course, you know, this is like a subtle one, but I wonder if maybe Sam Alman is framing this like a government backs stop. You know, if you frame AI as a utility, that's pretty tactical because it's going to need government subsidies, similar to how, you know, Sam Alman and OpenAI CFO previously floated the idea that the United States government would act as an insurer of the last resort for their infrastructure buildouts. So, I mean, some people would see this as a play to get public money while keeping private profits. And I mean, honestly, this entire analogy, I don't think it was that great because it sounds reassuring, but the actual model that he's describing is closer to one private company owning the power grid with no regulator. And that's, you know, making people really uneasy. Now, to say all of this entire situation, maybe he should have said the right thing, it this way, that way. I don't think it matters. The reason I don't think it matters is because AI sentiment is absolutely in the gutter at the moment. At least I think I would say it's completely split between certain groups. And there was actually a poll conducted by Heart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies for NBC surveying 1,000 registered voters between February 27th and March the 3rd, 2026. And AI's net favorability was minus 20 with 26% positive and 46% negative. And there are a few numbers worth noting. AI scored minus20 and ICE scored minus8. Trump scored minus12. So AI is indeed viewed more negatively than ICE and Trump. Now of course you could argue that this is a small sample size and maybe this doesn't reflect the wider picture, but the point here is that AI isn't viewed that great in the public light, which is why people have such a visible reaction to any statement from any CEO that could be interpreted in a negative way. I mean, if you actually take a look at the Anti-AII subreddit growth since opening, we can see that this is actually pretty incredible. These guys are growing members every single month. I think 10 to 20,000 people are joining this. And it's on track for like, you know, probably a million or 2 million in like, you know, a year or so. And this is not good. I mean, you have a bunch of people who are holding the opinion and rightly so in many regards that AI is not great for society. So, I mean, this rift is only going to get bigger and bigger. And like I said, I've already spoken about this, but you have to remember that, you know, another problem as well in this entire situation is that Samman's reputation isn't exactly the best. This article recently went semiviral and it was talking about the fact that Samman is the worst possible person to lead humanity to AGI. And I mean, when you have the CEO of one of the most notable AI companies in the world saying something, those statements are going to be misconstrued, torn apart, you know, there's going to be a billion different things that happen to it. So, if you're the CEO of this company that's basically leading that entire charge, you need to be extraordinarily careful with what you say because if you're not, someone can take that statement the wrong way and it's only going to add fuel to the fire. And of course, if your past isn't exactly the best in terms of how you've managed certain situations, that haven't shown the best honesty, best, you know, trustworthiness in terms of everyone being on the same team, it is only going

to make things work. I mean, AI hate is a bad thing, but when you have an CEO that appears to be shady from the outside looking in, that is also terrible. And like I said, this is the reason that people are already quitting. There is so much bad publicity right now around AI that pretty much anything that is, you know, a small ember, it's just going to ignite the gas that's in the room. It truly is fascinating. And I showed you guys this clip before, but I really want to play it again because the entire clip basically says that you need to tell a different story around AI because Silicon Valley is going to lose that messaging. And if you lose the messaging, you lose the users. users, then of course, you know, nobody's going to fund something that nobody's going to buy. So that is a key thing that you guys need to watch. — One of the major concerns I have is that AI is becoming deeply unpopular in America. Silicon Valley is losing the battle around AI. Doomers are now scaring people about jobs. They think all these job cuts that are going on in America are the result of AI. And number two, they're seeing their electric bills go up and they think that's also the result of AI. I've talked with a lot of Republican senator and House members who say they are afraid to mention the words AI because their popularity ratings go down. We need to get on the other side of that because that is a losing proposition for America. If what takes hold here is that, you know, it's politically popular to push back against AI, then David, I think that's what you're seeing at these state levels with Republican governors as well. I think both of those are false narratives, but we need to get on the other side. in China, they're not going to slow down. So, if we do an own goal here and slow down because we think somehow that this is the the path to greater economic growth, it's going to be a real problem. Both national security as well as economic security. So, of course, you can see here in response to that video, it says, "Wow, ordinary citizens don't like the world's most arrogant industry that's determined to destroy everything they know and love, whose entire value proposition depends on imposing mass unemployment on billions of people. Sounds weird, huh? " And I mean, he's basically saying that look, why on earth would millions of citizens enjoy a tool that is going to replace them and impose mass unemployment on billions of people? Nobody's going to like that tool. And that is a fair point. And so, another thing I do want to add here, and this is a bit of nuance. I think that this account is engagement farming. Now, hear me out. So, previously, this account actually the one that we're talking about that posted the clip that got a lot of interaction today. I think they're engagement farming because this original clip where yes, Samman did say that people talk about how much energy it takes to train an AI model versus it also takes a lot of energy to train a human and you know eat and you live, you know, a long life. He took that out of context. And I'm not saying that just because I have a channel that is surrounding AI. I remember when I made a video on that comment, a lot of the comments in, you know, the comment section, a lot of you guys did agree with me that comment was taken out of context and the reactions were a little bit maybe too far. And I think that since that account was able to take something out of context and it got 26 million views, I'm not sure how much they got paid, but since creator payouts are a thing, they are pretty much incentivized to take out, you know, Sam Alman's context. I mean I saw different interview clips floating around the internet and so you can see here that you know this clip was taken out of context in the wider discussion. So I mean in one hand you have the fact that Samman is literally just trying to say look this is going to become you know something that's free, cheap and accessible like the internet where you can just have it on demand and it's not going to be some crazy expensive thing that only rich people can afford. But you know this chief nerd account I do have to say it's a little bit disservice because you have to understand that people want to hate AI. people already are frustrated with the technology. So, I mean, you've got an account that's, you know, engagement farming, I guess you could say, taking things out of context cuz they did it in the past. Then, of course, you have a CEO that's public opinion isn't the best. And then, of course, you have a wider public opinion on a technology that's just going to unemploy a massive amount of people. That is a recipe for disaster. And so, let me know what you guys think about this entire story. I'd love to know your thoughts and theories. And I'll see you guys in the next