Is now the time to Boycott Chat GPT? I've raised boycotts here before and EAs seem a bit allergic, but @Rutger Bregman makes a strong case. Costs little, the time seems ripe and it might achieve something big.
If there was even a 5% chance that a boycott could either harm Open AI or push them to reform (optimistic?) it, might it be worth putting some energy or even EA money into supporting this cause? Unfortunately OpenPhil probably couldn't as they have such a conflict of interest with Anthropic, but others could. That is if money is even needed to support this.
I'm not sure about this but one short Linkedin post almost sold me on it! This guy Bregman sure knows how to communicate....
"... The Montgomery Bus Boycott wasn't a protest against all of American segregation. It targeted one bus company, in one city. A year later, it had broken the back of segregated transit.
I believe we're looking at a similar moment right now with ChatGPT.
Most people don't know that ChatGPT's president, Greg Brockman, donated $25 million to Trump's MAGA Super PAC — the single largest donation in their latest filing. OpenAI won a $200 million Pentagon contract, and apparently has no problems with mass surveillance and killer drones (something Anthropic refuses to build). ICE uses a screening tool powered by ChatGPT. And they're spending $125 million+ on a Super PAC that attacks any politician who tries to regulate AI.
But here's what makes this different from just another outrage cycle: OpenAI is genuinely fragile. Their market share has collapsed from 69% to 45% in a single year. They spend $3 for every $1 they earn. They're on track to lose $14 billion this year. They've started running ads: something their own CEO once called 'a last resort'. Investors are watching their subscriber numbers like hawks.
Over 700,000 people have already joined the international boycott of ChatGPT. It takes ten seconds to switch to an alternative. The products are just as good or better. The switching cost is essentially zero.
Greg Brockman bet $25 million that you wouldn't care.
Prove him wrong "
Disclosure: My organisation OneDay Health has received free API credits from ChatGPT and still currently use their model in our AI clinical decision tool.
This is a linkpost for https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7432447250624167936/
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This seems like a good time to remind everyone of @JamesÖz 🔸classic post why you can justify almost anything using historical social movements. This seems especially true when a single anecdote is referenced. Maybe Bregman has more evidence behind this claim but he certainly hasn't shared it in this post.
Thanks Elliot yes I love that post! First this is just a Linken snapshot I posted, so we can't expect him to lay it all out there. I think he uses the historical movement example more as an intro as well, there are other compelling reasons besides that in the text!
I'm convinced tho I must admit I was turned off by this post (and the associated quitgpt.org) opening its case by Brockman's contribution to MAGA. And that's saying something cuz I dislike that movement a lot.
But I really think it's much more partisan and controversial than it should be when the reasons that follow include being unprincipled about enabling authoritarianism.
If you want to get people to boycott GPT, tying them to MAGA is probably a good tactic. The US populace is unfavourable to Trump by a wide margin, and the rest of the western world hates him even more.
Remember, people need some level of active motivation to maintain a boycott: and we have seen how motivating the dislike of MAGA is. If you try and make an appeal that will not offend anybody, it will be a wishy-washy thing that motivates nobody.
Now there are over 1,200,000 people who have joined the international boycott. https://quitgpt.org/
Anthropic as well, in December they agreed to allow the U.S. gov to use its AI systems for missile and cyber defense purposes. They received an ultimatum from the DoD to allow their systems to be used for ALL legal military purposes, basically surveillance, lethal autonomous weapons etc. Will see what they decide by Friday.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/anthropic-pentagon-us-military-can-use-ai-missile-defense-hegseth-rcna260534
I've updated positively hugely on Anthropic after their response to this today
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/26/anthropic-pentagon-claude
It occurs to me that a person could create a nonprofit competitor to ChatGPT, which makes use of open models and donates excess revenue to AI alignment research. That way you can pay for a chatbot without contributing to AI advancement.
Not saying Bregman is wrong (I don't really have a belief on the matter) but this is not what I'd call a "strong case". He says
But then he provides only one example (Montgomery Bus Boycott), and doesn't provide any evidence that the Montgomery Bus Boycott was an important causal factor in ending segregation.
FWIW I certainly wouldn't tell anyone not to boycott ChatGPT. Decreasing OpenAI's revenue is good for the world.
I suppose if you're using a free account and blocking ads, you are adding costs without adding revenue. The important thing is to boycott acts which put money in OpenAI's pocket, which is not necessarily the same thing as boycotting all of their offerings.
That's a good point maybe I was going a bit far with "strong". I've changed the title to "Decent" I think it's pretty well established though in the activist world that is often effective to pick one specific thing to get a"win" on, at the right time. For sure proving casualty in activism is rarely possible.
I agree it's hardly a comprehensive argument, but it's not bad for a LinkedIn post ;).
It may be well established, but given the incentives in that world, it's unlikely that the belief would need to correlate with truth to have become well established.
I think you're being too cynical about activists. I would say the strongest incentive for activists is to actually achieve what they want in the world. Sure there are other competing incentives (pride, justification of action etc.) but many activists (maybe a minority but many) do actually really really want to win and optimise for that....
There are loads of clear cut examples where picking one thing to win has just straight up worked. For example my wife (unbiased example) led a big campaign here in Gulu district Northern Uganda to ban the smallest unit of alcohol - they sold spirits in small plastic bags for only 15 cents. The campaign started through a small group at a church, and they built a coalition of the local government, NGOs, churches, mosques etc. and then got the law through regionally and enforced it successfully. Now the smallest unit of alcohol costs twice as much here - getting the lowest unit price of alcohol higher is basically proven to reduce problematic alcohol use.
There's just no way that would have happened without the careful, targeted campaign over 3 years, the counterfactual is hard to deny given all the difficult steps needed to get the ban and no other district ever did it.
Then 2 years later the whole country banned the alcohol sachets. Now that one might have happened anyway, or their campaign might have contributed its hard to tell.
This is a smaller scale example but I know of a bunch of other similar ones where the causality is pretty clear.
https://movendi.ngo/blog/2017/04/05/problem-sachet-alcohol-gulu-uganda/
I don't have a ChatGPT subscription. If I stop using their free tier, I think this has two effects: It benefits them because they can spend less resources on inference and it hurts them because investors lose trust in them. Do you think the expected net effect is positive or negative? Should I stop using their free tier if I want to protest against OpenAI?
Also, I noticed that I can check multiple boxes on https://quitgpt.org/ and only one of them is "I cancelled my subscription". If I understand the footnote below the number displayed at the top (currently 1,200,000) correctly, it counts everyone who checked any of the boxes. I would be more curious about how high the number of only the people is, who canceled their subscription or commit to not paying for ChatGPT in the future.
Great questions and I'm not sure about these answers at all!
I think at the moment them having less users in general does more damage, than they benefit from the increased resources available. Fundamentally this is a race at the moment and a fight for investors and supremacy - On the free account doing even a little damage to that reputation/investability I would guess would do more than the small benefit from freeing up their compute...