32 Comments
User's avatar
Mark Dtayo's avatar

Dana, you just described what 1.5 million people did in 48 hours. I tracked it in real time. 295% uninstall spike. Altman's own VP quit and joined Anthropic. The app the President tried to BAN hit #1 in America. By Monday Altman was calling the Pentagon begging to rewrite the deal. Your breakup note, multiplied by 1.5 million, knocked out a billionaire and the Pentagon in the same round. Full receipt: tmaark.substack.com/p/hhhooollleee-sht

Dana DuBois's avatar

OK, that's extraordinary. Thank you for sharing. How did you track that info in real time?

Mark Dtayo's avatar

No inside access. Just obsessive open-source tracking. Every number in the piece came from public reporting, app store rankings, company statements, and news wires. I just refused to stop pulling the thread.

And thank you for subscribing. It means a lot.

Keddie Burrows's avatar

Wow! I love people power in action!

Laura Larrecou's avatar

Tried Claude. Great!

Rye Howard-Stone's avatar

Come over to the Claude side 😏 it's way smarter anyway

Kay's avatar

Emotional anthropomorphism is a big one for sure, especially since it's moving too fast for there to be time to adequately assess the damage it's doing. Because all of these tech bros just want to make as much money as possible. In addition, as a professional writer whose work HAS been stolen and used to train these models, I'm displeased. MORE than happy for it to be used to better the world but humans being what they are, that's not happening as much as I'd like it too.

Glenn Dorsey's avatar

You will not be disappointed with Claude. And I agree 100% with your reasoning.

Julie's avatar

Great! I never use it don’t subscribe and don’t want any AI! Congratulations!

JOHN VICEDOMINI's avatar

Personally Gemini and Claude are better tools.

Evelyn Scolman Lemoine's avatar

Dana, even for someone who is not a heavy user of any AI tool, I found your essay engaging and informative. Thank you. (And you had me with your bio bit: "Em-dashes, Oxford commas, and well placed semi-colons make my heart happy." I don't know how many people share our love for these things, but it's always great to find someone who does!)

May you make your peace with ChatGPT and get what you are looking for from Claude.

Dana DuBois's avatar

Awww I love this comment so much—thanks Evelyn!

Anthony Hipp's avatar

Bravo. I removed ChatGPT from my iPhone yesterday.

Nick G, A Dude On The Couch's avatar

I loved this piece. It wasn't full of techno-bulshit and nonsense fiction

It was an honest discussion of use and humanity.

Kara Swisher needs to subscribe to this article, specifically, and learn what AI really is.

Todd Vickers's avatar

I canceled my subscription, and using Claude I had it form the prompt to do the migration of my relevant historical data from ChatGPT to Claude.

I've been using Claude myself for the last 3 or 4 months but made the break last night.

Ryan Delahanty's avatar

Dana, the breakup instinct is right. But while everyone debates what ChatGPT might do inside the Pentagon, Claude was already used in the Iran strikes on Feb 28 — hours after Trump ordered it removed. They couldn't pull it out. Too deep inside Palantir's classified networks.

I wrote the sourced investigation on what I'm calling "captured AI." Switching providers matters. But the real story is what happens to any model once it crosses the air gap.

https://delahanty.substack.com/p/the-first-captured-ai

I also broke up with ChatGPT this week. But ALL companies--including Anthropic--need to be aware of the dangers of how their models might be used.

Ryan's avatar

Is sad but so true. We need to stop anyone that supports Trump.

Nina Cochina's avatar

I never had much of a relationship with ChatGPT it was more like we made out on the couch a couple of times, so it’s kinda hard to relate to a real relationship. From the little bit I saw was that they would sum up questions that you asked, which you can just find on regular non AI google. Also the fact that it is doing work for you like writing papers or emails that you are more than capable of doing yourself, so you really do not learn anything or improve how you write, and of course the massive amount of finite resources that go into making AI work will make everyone struggle in the long run, oh and the massive amount of jobs that you will become obsolete because of AI were all red flags. I also remember watching something about a guy asking how chat gpt felt about itself and how it will affect humans, and the answer was very against itself. So congrats on your new found freedom!

Steve Winkler's avatar

These chat tools are way beyond my meager pay grade. But instinctively I think you can gussy up a grift to present it as an indispensable, alluring gift, but a grift is a grift is a grift.