{"id":9202,"date":"2026-03-05T19:01:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T19:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/rage-openai-protests\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T19:01:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T19:01:30","slug":"rage-openai-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/rage-openai-protests\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rage at OpenAI Has Grown So Immense That There Are Entire Protests Against It"},"content":{"rendered":"
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OpenAI has faced protests on and off for years. But after its CEO Sam Altman announced a new deal with the Department of Defense over how its AI systems would be deployed across the military on Friday, it\u2019s being barraged with an intensity of backlash that the company has never seen.<\/p>\n

Droves of loyal ChatGPT users declared they were jumping shipping to Claude, whose maker Anthropic had pointedly refused to cut a deal with the Pentagon that gives it unrestricted access to its AI system \u2014 even in the face of government threats to seize the company\u2019s tech. Claude quickly surged to the top of the app store, supplanting OpenAI\u2019s chatbot. Uninstalls of the ChatGPT app spiked by nearly 300 percent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, some are latching onto the wave of anti-OpenAI sentiment to voice broader critiques of the company. On Tuesday, some fifty protestors from the \u201cQuitGPT\u201d movement demonstrated outside of OpenAI\u2019s headquarters in San Francisco, decrying everything from its AI\u2019s potential to disrupt jobs, to gutting the environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI is taking water from communities, polluting communities, and it is also increasing communities\u2019 electricity bills,\u201d one protestor, Perrin Millekin, told Business Insider<\/em><\/a>. \u201cThey\u2019re not even paying for it \u2014 we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others voiced more philosophical critiques.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as I saw it start showing up in visuals and imagery, I could see exactly where it heads,\u201d Megan Matson, who refuses to use any AI, told BI<\/em>. \u201cIt destroys journalism, it destroys art, it destroys the expression of our common humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even tech workers were in attendance. \u201cI never go to protests. This is new for me,\u201d a 26-year-old Oakland tech worker who wore a cardboard robot mask told the San Francisco Standard<\/em><\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re not normally political people. We\u2019re techies, you know \u2014 we want to build stuff. What OpenAI is doing in terms of building legal mass surveillance technology for the government\u2026 is frankly, insane.\u201d<\/p>\n

Across the pond, hundreds of more activists gathered in King\u2019s Cross in London<\/a>,\u00a0a tech hub home to the UK headquarters of OpenAI, Meta, and Google DeepMind, on Saturday to voice similar critiques of the AI industry.<\/p>\n

Altman has clearly been rattled by the widespread outrage. He hosted a rare AMA on X to directly address his customers\u2019 concerns<\/a> the day after he announced the DoD deal, where he strikingly admitted that the agreement was \u201crushed,\u201d and that its \u201coptics don\u2019t look good.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

By Monday, he was in full damage control mode. In a lengthy and apologetic statement, Altman claimed that OpenAI was now altering the terms of its Pentagon deal to explicitly prohibit the use of its AI systems to surveil US citizens, exhibiting a degree of people-pleasing normally witnessed in its sycophantic chatbots. Such a restriction was one of the red lines over which Anthropic had reportedly fallen out with the Pentagon. But Altman in his apology statement made no mention of Anthropic\u2019s other key guarantee: that AI not be used in autonomous weapon systems.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time OpenAI has faced protests for its cooperation with the military. In February 2024, dozens of activists thronged near the entrance to the company\u2019s HQ after it removed a stipulation that banned military and warfare applications<\/a> from its usage policies. Mere days after the revision, OpenAI announced that it was collaborating with the Pentagon on several projects.<\/p>\n

Strikingly, some of the current dissent is even coming from the company\u2019s own ranks. Nearly 1,000 workers from OpenAI and Google have signed an open letter<\/a> demanding the companies to refuse the Pentagon\u2019s demands to use their AI tech for mass surveillance and autonomous weaponry.<\/p>\n

More on AI:<\/strong> After Banning Anthropic From Military Use, Pentagon Still Relying Heavily on It in Iran War<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The post The Rage at OpenAI Has Grown So Immense That There Are Entire Protests Against It<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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