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Sam Altman is trying to explain his company’s dealings with the U.S. government. |Image source: Getty Images/Tomohiro Ohsumi/Stringer
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Sam Altman posts an internal memo about U.S. military deal on X
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He said the announcement was “rushed” and tweaked the wording
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ChatGPT uninstalls increased by 295% according to latest data
ChatGPT uninstall rates increased by approximately 295% as controversy surrounding OpenAI’s decision to sign a defense agreement with the U.S. Department of War (DoW) continues, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitting that the agreement was “rushed.”
Altman has taken to social media to clarify certain aspects of the deal and change some of its wording. For example, the agreement now explicitly states that DoW’s AI systems powered by ChatGPT “may not be used knowingly for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals.”
In addition to the use of fully autonomous weapons (which Altman did not mention here), mass surveillance is also a major sticking point for critics of the OpenAI protocol and Claude developer Anthropic. The company abandoned its agreement with the DoW last week after failing to get the security guarantees it wanted from the U.S. military.
In the same social media post, Altman said “we should not have been rushed to break the news on Friday” and that it came across as “opportunistic and hasty.” The CEO also called on the U.S. government to reverse its order excluding Anthropic and Claude from official institutions, calling it a “very bad decision.”
“We want to work through the democratic process,” he added. “If I were given an order that I thought was unconstitutional, I would certainly rather go to jail than comply with it.”
ChatGPT churn continues
It remains to be seen whether Ultraman’s latest attempt to ease security concerns will work. According to data from Sensor Tower (via TechCrunch), ChatGPT has seen a 295% increase in uninstall rates in the US over the past few days, with nearly three times as many users deleting the app from their phones as usual.
Many ChatGPT abandoners seem to have moved on to Claude. Sensor Tower reported that U.S. installs grew 37% on Friday and 51% on Saturday, and Claude topped Apple’s App Store charts. Over the past few days, the AI bot has also made chat memories available to all users.
A quick look at Reddit shows that AI ethics is important to many users, although there are also numerous complaints in multiple Reddit threads that the quality of ChatGPT’s responses has been declining of late. The GPT-4o model was recently retired, and OpenAI received a lot of criticism for it.
As the debate over the safety and ethics of artificial intelligence models continues, consumers, the U.S. government, OpenAI, and Anthropic will still have more to say on these issues in the coming days.
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