Last Saturday there were 295% more uninstallations of the ChatGPT mobile app in the United States. Many users felt terrible that OpenAI reached a theoretically unethical agreement with the US Department of Defense to replace Anthropic, and they have punished it with a “Cancel ChatGPT” movement on social networks which has also had an impact on those uninstallations.
what has happened. The consulting firm Sensor Tower, which monitors the status of mobile application stores, has indicated that the ChatGPT uninstall rate has increased by 295% on Saturday, February 28 compared to the previous day. Normally, the uninstall rate is around 9% from one day to the next, but that day it was clear that many users decided to get rid of the app at the same time. The reason is obvious.
The Pentagon vs. Anthropic. The pentagon it had been months working with Claude, Anthropic’s AI, which was already used on classified documents. Anthropic had made it a condition not to use its AI for mass espionage and the development of autonomous weapons, but the Department of Defense (DoD, which many now call the “War Department”) wanted Anthropic remove those limitations. Anthropic refusedand that’s where OpenAI comes in.
and opportunistic. Sam Altman first praised Anthropic’s stance. A few hours later he announced that they had reached an agreement with the DoD to replace Claude with ChatGPT. This has been widely criticized for OpenAI’s lack of ethics and opportunistic attitude, and led to a “ChatGPT cancellation” movement which has had an immediate impact on the downloads and uninstallations of this chatbot.
Altman wants to clear things up. He OpenAI announcement It was unclear whether OpenAI actually imposed the same limits that Anthropic had imposed, but Altman soon announced that had added amendments to the agreement to avoid any confusion. Apparently they have been added protections against mass surveillancebut nothing is mentioned about the development of lethal autonomous weapons.
Punishment for OpenAI. Not only has it been noticeably uninstalled, but in the opinions of the ChatGPT app many users have given a single star out of five in a very high proportion: those bad opinions grew by 775% on Saturday and then by 100% on Sunday according to Sensor Tower. Five-star reviews fell by 50%.
Claude has overtaken ChatGPT in downloads as a result of the latest events with the Pentagon. Source: Appfigures.
And Claude already surpasses it in downloads. Another consultancy that monitors the download market, appfiguresindicated that on Saturday Claude’s downloads surpassed those of ChatGPT in the US for the first time. In fact, Claude has become the most downloaded app in at least six countries outside the US: Belgium, Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland.
Streisand Effect. We are facing another case of Streisand effect: trying to censor certain information or a certain company ends up being counterproductive. The Pentagon tried to make Anthropic the bad guy, but what has happened is that the company is now seen as the great defender of ethics and “AI alignment.” This has made people perceive it as a more morally respectable option than ChatGPT.
But Anthropic has problems. According to Reuters Several US government departments and agencies have made the switch to OpenAI and have begun to stop using Anthropic models for their work. That is already a problem for Anthropicbut even more so is the fact that their recent investment round, in which they raised 60,000 million dollars, could be in danger. If the DoD decides to label Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” its contracts and agreements with dozens of companies would be at risk, and its own future as a company would be at risk. It would be an extraordinary measure and it seems unlikely that the US would go to that point, but nothing is certain today.
Image | Village Global
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