Sam Altman FIRES Back At Critics - We Are Not STUPID!

So Sam Alman has fired shots back at Anthropic after their Super Bowl ads went completely viral yesterday, sparking a rivalry between both firms. Let's talk about it. So if you aren't familiar with what happened yesterday or a few hours ago, Anthropic released a set of different Super Bowl advertisements that basically showed off why they're never going to put ads in their models. It featured some clearly humorous scenarios where users would ask an AI model, "Hey, what do I do about this scenario? " And then the AI model would respond immediately and then drift off course to a paid promotion. And it was pretty funny if you'd seen those videos. Now, like I said, I made a video about this around 10 to 12 hours ago, but the hilarious thing about this is that these went super viral. Now, this is all because chatbt said they were going to place ads coming in early 2026. And of course, Sam Alman and OpenAI were clearly not happy about these ads because of course you had the Twitter mob going completely crazy saying, "Wow, OpenAI are completely foolish for putting ads in their platform. " Now, of course, like I said, Samman decided to respond and he said a few things that you're probably going to want to see. So, you can see one of his first tweets here are first the good part of the anthropic ads. They're funny and I laughed. But then here's where things start to get a little bit crazy because he just goes off on a rift completely trying to rip Anthropic to shreds. It's pretty crazy what he says. But let's take a look at it, okay? Because a lot of his claims are actually true and it's going to be kind of interesting to see how users react to this. So, he says, "I wonder why Anthropic would go for something so clearly dishonest. Our most important principle for ads is that we say we don't exactly do this. We would obviously never run ads in the way that Anthropic depicts them. We're not stupid and we know our users reject that. And essentially what he's saying here is that the way the video depicted the ads is that ads are going to be an intrusive tail off in a way that you could never tell if your conversation is actually really about your end goal or if your conversation is about the end goal of monetizing. And I do think that as a first statement is probably the saving grace for OpenAI because that is the main concern for most users is that when you ask an AI an issue, is it actually going to give you what you want in a response or is it going to tell you something for the paid advertisement so they can make their money? I mean, right now it starts out like clearly being described as yes, this is an ad placement, but I do wonder what it would look like in the future. Now, of course, if you're wondering what the Chat Gypty ads are going to look like, they've clearly shown us that the ads are going to be a pop-up bar that's just relevant to your conversation. So, the response isn't going to change at all. And I think that clear distinction is what may actually work for OpenAI. I think if people do see a specific solution to their problem, then they're probably going to use it rather than just simply ignore it. And OpenAI says, "Look, we're not stupid. We know that our users would reject that, which is why we're never going to do And so this is why they say I guess it's on brand for Anthropic to use double speak to use a deceptive ad to critique theoretical deceptive ads that aren't real. But a Super Bowl ad is not where I would expect it. Essentially he's saying here is that what Anthropic are doing is completely deceptive. And I got to be honest with you guys, I actually do agree it is a little bit deceptive for Anthropic to make an ad that basically makes it seem like any AI that now adds ads is of course going to be added in that way. Now, of course, they do need to exaggerate a little bit for the humorous effect, but I do think that if you actually know how ads are going to come in chat GPT, you'll know that this is not going to be an issue at all. Now, here's where he fires some serious shots at anthropic. And I think this is one of those, you know, statements that really puts it into perspective just how popular chat GPT is. We live in a bubble, guys. If you're watching this channel, you're likely someone who uses AI often, pretty much every day. And so because of that, you don't realize where the true user base lies. For example, this is what he said, okay? He says, "More importantly, we believe everyone deserves to use AI and are committed to free access because we believe access creates agency. " And this is the craziest statement. More Texans use Chat GBT for free than total people use Claude in the United States. So we have a differently shaped problem that they do. And if you pay for ChatGT Plus or Pro, we don't show you ads. So what he's saying here is that more people in the state of Texas use chat GBT for free as a whole than the entirety of people using Claude in the United States. Essentially what he's saying here is that look we're so popular that only a state is the similar level of you know our population. So we don't even need to you know worry about the problems that you have because we're far more different than you. So this is clearly an attack at the fact that OpenAI are clearly the biggest brand name. I think people do forget just how crazy opening eyes reaches. I

mean, take a look at this image of monthly unique visitors. We can see that ChachiT has 400 million, Gemini has 122 million, Deepseek at 50 million, Perplexity at 19 million, and then of course we have Claude at 15. 5 million. So I think you have to understand here that OpenAI and Chat GBT right now they are the clear kings of distribution. Of course, when it started out, this was, you know, not as diverse as it is now. But look at Cloud compared to Chat GBT in terms of the absolute user base. I think OpenAI is saying, look, we've got 400 million users. Most people use it for free. If we drop some ads in, it's not going to be the end of the world. And Anthropic, we don't even have nearly enough the problems that you do. Now, of course, you can see that they talk about the kind of problems that Anthropic does. They serve an expensive product to rich people. And they're saying that look, we are glad that they do that and we're glad that we're doing it too, but we feel strongly that we need to bring AI to villager people who can't afford to pay for subscriptions. And then of course they say more importantly, and this is where it gets crazy because most people didn't actually realize this. But when you, you know, understand what's going on in the back, you understand why this makes sense. So they say Anthropic wants to control what people do with AI. They block companies they don't like from using their coding products, including us. And essentially what they're saying here, and this is something that most people don't know, is that like if you work at a Frontier AI lab, XAI, if you work at Google DeepMind, if you work at OpenAI, you cannot use Opus 4. 5 to code anything that is workrelated. Essentially, there was a recent, not recent, but a few months ago, there were actually cases of where Anthropic shut down accounts from people who worked at XAI and other competing labs. Now you might be wondering why is that the case? It's because anthropic in the terms of service basically say that you cannot use your, you know, art product to develop a competing product. And that is fair enough. So you can see right here it says scoop XAI staff had been using anthropics models internally through cursor until anthropic cut off the startup's access this week. Here's what XAI co-founder Tony Woo staff sent on Wednesday according to a copy of the internal Slack message I viewed. Hi team, I believe many of you have already discovered that Anthropic models are not responding on cursor. According to Curser, this is a new policy that Anthropic is enforcing on all of its major competitors. This is both bad and good news. We'll get a hit on productivity, but it really pushes us to develop our own coding product/models. We're at a time which AI is now a critical technology for our own productivity. And this year is going to be crazily wild for us. We're going to be developing our own products and we'll have something to share with everyone soon. In the meantime, just use the Grock models. So, this is why OpenAI are basically saying, but look, companies like Anthropic, well, only Anthropic are blocking companies that they don't like from using their coding products. But you have to understand that for anthropic, why would they let you use Claude 4. 5 Opus to develop a competing product? It doesn't really make sense. Their entire business model is to wipe out the competition or at least gain as much market share. And if you are their competitor, they're not going to let you use their product to basically end them. That doesn't make any sense at all. So, I mean, I understand this is kind of like a shot fired, but of course, this kind of makes sense from Anthropic's point of view. And you can see that OpenAI are basically saying that look, we care a great deal about safe, broadly beneficial AGI, and we know the only way to get there is to work with the world to prepare. And this is one of the key things that they're saying about anthropic that I don't think is true. I think this is probably a little bit of a reach. They're saying that one authoritarian company won't get us there on their own. To say nothing of the obvious risks, it's a dark path. And they're basically saying that look, if Anthropic are already cutting off other companies from using their tools, you can see how the company is forming. They're very authoritarian and that is not good. That could be a dark path. Now, I don't think that's the truth. I think Anthropic are probably one of the safest companies. I would trust them more than OpenAI to lead anything. So that statement once again, I'm not sure why he would make this. It doesn't really make that much sense. But of course, one company just trying to lead everything of course won't get us to AGI. You will need a competing sea of different companies. And he does say that as for their Super Bowl ad, it's going to be about the builders and how anyone can build anything. Now, you can see here that they're saying, "We're enjoying watching so many people switch to Codeex. There have now been 500,000 app downloads since launch on Monday and we think builders are really going to love what's coming next in a few weeks. I believe Codeex is going to win. We will continue to work hard to make even more intelligence available for lower cost and lower prices to our users. So that's OpenAI's recent project which is of course competing with Claude Opus. And that's basically OpenAI's product that has been released. I've actually been using it. It's pretty okay. And I'm going be showing you guys uh probably tomorrow or today how you can use the software cuz it's actually really decent. So essentially they're saying that look we're going to continue to make intelligence available for everyone

and lower our prices to users and that apparently this time it belongs to the builders not the people who want to control them. Clearly they're saying that look we understand that Anthropic made a funny ad but we're saying that we don't control what you do with the models. I think it's a bit of an overreach but I mean it's the only card they've got to play. Now, a lot of people are saying that Sam Olman writing a 400word defensive essay calling them deceptive authoritarian. I mean, it's clearly, you know, something that hit a nerve and people are wondering why. And of course, they're referring back to this clip where Sam Alman says, "Hey, you know, we don't want to add ads because we feel like that's a last resort. " And of course, they're now adding ads into the platform. — I kind of think of ads as like a last resort for us for a business model. Um, I would do it if it meant that was the only way to get everybody on the world in the world like access to great services. But if we can find something that doesn't do that, I'd prefer that. And so, one of the things that I did actually find quite funny was this statement where someone is posting a meme that says, "Look at this nonprofit talking about profits. I mean, it's pretty hilarious. " A lot of the responses weren't really supportive of OpenAI. I mean, they do seem to get cooked on Twitter quite a lot, but I mean, their user base is clearly one of the largest in the world. So I think they will be fine for now. And I mean one of the things that like I mean I keep seeing this and let me know if this is true in the comments. Are you a 40 user? Because you know how they say one authoritarian company won't get us there. And you can see this quote from this person. Okay. And this had a lot of likes and retweets. It says said the CEO who literally you know sunseted 40 against 40% of his users will. Sam this entire tweet is a masterclass in psychological projection. You accuse Anthropic of wanting control, yet you are the one look locking the cancel subscription button, throttling paid models, forcing users into an adup supported ecosystem. And I mean, I don't know, this entire 40 thing, if you aren't aware, essentially most people that used 40 really loved the model because of how psychopantic it was. And so when they shut off the model, a lot of people just basically flipped out and got super mad. And I mean, it's just a whole another situation. You can see keep 40. If you go on Twitter and you type in keep440 hash keep440, you will see a large swath of users complaining that 40 is now gone. So I mean it's just a completely different thing. But I don't think OpenAI are authoritarian that much. I think they're pretty open in terms of what you can do. But I don't think a company stopping you from using their models to create competing products is that bad of a deal. Now let me know what you think. Some people say that this is a total victory. You can see that this guy says has limited name recognition. launches an ad attacking the biggest competitor on national television, forces CEO and high-profile employees to give them even more publicity. Total anthropic victory. Let me know what you think. I think this is super, you know, interesting. And I'll see you guys in the next