Just say no to murder bots

The last week of February 2026 was a crazy week for AI. The current regime tried to compel Anthropic to provide unfettered access to Claude to basically do whatever the fuck they want, to which Dario Amodei was basically like, nah, bro, we good. And while I am generally NOT a fan of tech CEOs, I was impressed with how Amodei explained the situation in a subsequent interview.

It is good for companies to draw a bright red line when it comes to their technology being used to make autonomous murder bots or to spy on U.S. citizens. The last one is especially concerning given the U.S. government's not-so-stellar track record of using technology to surveil its own citizens, often in flagrant violation of U.S. law. See, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

But setting aside this whole SKYNET thing for the moment…

…I have found the consumer-side reaction very interesting. In general, late 2025/early 2026 has been a wild time for consumer-facing AI. Every week brings a new model, new benchmarks, new hype. One model is the best, now another, then another in a weird game of almost weekly one-upmanship.

In most cases, the hype is Internet clickbait and I doubt it moves the needle much on consumer utilization. But the reaction from consumers in response to Anthropic refusing to agree to the Pentagon's demands followed by OpenAi swooping in and saying they are totally fine helping make autonomous murder bots and surveilling U.S. citizens has been fascinating to watch.

Over in r/claude and r/chatgpt people are constantly posting about how this whole situation is causing them to join Claude or leave ChatGPT, respectively. Same goes for conversations on Discord servers where I lurk. Even in corners that are often mostly politically agnostic or even have a tinge of pro-military, pro-USA sentiment, this seems to have crossed a line for people. I even saw a joke someone made about how by canceling a ChatGPT subscription and subscribing to Claude, they were doing something that (in their opinion) was more powerful than voting.

OpenAI and Anthropic have made business decisions this week that likely pale in comparison to the revenue they generate from consumer-facing plans. But those consumer plans aren't nothing, especially Claude's which can run upwards of $200/month if you go with their highest plan. And of course there are enterprise subscriptions.

But all this comes at an interesting inflection point where the market is getting crowded and these products are similar enough that you know not all will survive.

Scott Galloway has predicted for a while now that OpenAi is on a doom slide and I agree with him. I suspect it is why OpenAI was quick to agree to the Pentagon's terms such that they didn't risk losing $200 million. Gotta do something when you're hemorrhaging money.

Perplexity meanwhile is on brink of collapse. It was a great product, it had a moment, but it has done nothing to keep up with ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, so I don't see how it can survive.

I suspect there will be major shifts in 2026 with respect to AI companies. Claude seems to be inching ahead with consumers, largely because of its incredible capabilities but also because it is drawing lines about what it won't do, and calling attention to the potential dangers we are facing. Anthropic has also released a steady stream of updates that are actually usable (although it really needs to get a handle on its token limits because they are getting ridiculous).

I predict OpenAI will pay less attention to its consumer-facing products and emphasize itself as an enterprise/government system. I think Perplexity will die, likely getting subsumed by an existing AI company or folded into some enterprise solution. Gemini will be a fully embedded tool, possibly even doing away with an AI-only facing platform and instead getting Gemini embedded everywhere, hence Google's latest deal with Apple to power Siri. Because Google is well known for killing off products people love (see, for example, Google Reader and Google+).

On the consumer front, I predict Claude will be the winner. If it can get its usage limits figured out, I think it is the best consumer-facing AI tool on the market right now, one that can increase productivity not just for coders, but really for anyone willing to learn how to use it. Not participating in helping build SKYNET is just a nice bonus.