`THE PITHY TAKEAWAY: OpenAI is now worth more than Nike, Netflix, and McDonald’s combined. It got there by saying yes to the military, yes to surveillance contracts, and yes to monitoring fast food workers. The question on your mind should not be whether or not OpenAI is getting too powerful. The question we must all ask is what will OpenAI say yes to next.
`
this was a fantastic takeaway. 100%
3) forever jealous of your color/style. love your work Mike.
I hold you in such high esteem that they really mean a lot. 😎
This week's takeaway literally wrote itself since OpenAI was saying yes to it all, lol.
And thank you for the kind words about the style. I figure if I'm going to drag people through dystopia every week, I should at least try to make it look badass. 😈
Have you heard that Anthropic is now SUING the White House? (The news broke earlier today. They are claiming a violation of their First Amendment rights.)
I saw that! Amodei is a true savant -- genius in ways, and a moron in others. Sam Altman is shady but eminently more practical. To your point, let's buy more popcorn and watch the show!!
Mike, great piece again! This links soooo closely to something I studied on my AI Safety & Ethics course around military AI and collective action problems. Even when the risks are visible, the pressure not to fall behind keeps pushing things forward anyway. That’s what scares me most sometimes. Not just what AI can do, but the systems around it that make restraint so hard. Another banger :)
Prompt-wise: I love that we were farmers one week, and this week we are gardeners (I will be very disappointed If you don't grow your own vegetables). Out of ChatGPT and Claude - Claude (unsurprisingly) wins, hands-down. Thanks again for a great read
Thank you so much for reading and replying, as always.
You brought up one of the most fascinating problems of our time. Everyone is racing for some type of "ultimate AI", at the cost of safety.
Also yes. I'm absolutely a gardening nerd, lol. Huge one. Since you mentioned it, Dallas and I actually published three nerdy "nature AI prompts" a few days ago covering spring gardens, native pollinators, and at-risk species. You might love them if you grow food!
Mike, where will this US government/OpenAI/Anthropic business end?!! It blows my mind that a company like OpenAI will have so much power with their platform (and ads, do the military get the ads?!) to influence the world through their deal with the government. This line made me laugh: "One got the Pentagon deal. The other got the App Store." I am so glad that people are flocking to Claude though.
I just can't with the Burger King monitoring. What kind of big brother approach are they endorsing here? This is not okay.
Thank you for the shoutout! (If you check the collab post again, the thumbnail is now animated, thanks to Pinkie's latest post). I am off to the local plant nursery tomorrow and could not be more excited.
First, thank you so much for the thoughtful comment. It was an absolute pleasure to give you a mention, and it's a ton of fun collaborating with you. We should totally do it again.
Your ads question made me laugh. Imagine a soldier getting a Chewy.com ad mid-briefing. (Lol.)
As for the US government/OpenAI/Anthropic drama, I think this only gets bigger from here. I honestly have no idea how it all plays out. But it was probably inevitable that these companies would end up deeply entangled with state power.
And yes, the Burger King monitoring angle is funny on the surface. But also kind of creepy. The AI is now officially monitoring and training humans. 👀
On a lighter note, I hope you have an amazing time at the nursery tomorrow! 🌱
The part that stuck with me is the contrast between replacing people and monitoring the ones who remain. AI works best when it removes busywork, not when it becomes the boss. In hospitality we learned this years ago. Systems should support the people doing the work, not watch them like a security camera.
First, thank you so much for reading and responding.
:)
Hope you are having a good day.
I also agree with you 100%. The creepy dystopia (lol) I tried to capture this week is that on one hand, thousands of people got laid off from a company that is highly profitable. On the other hand, AI is being used to "hound" those that still have jobs, lol.
Your perspective from hospitality brings something to this conversation that a lot of tech voices miss entirely!!
My nerdy friend you have a good week. There are some “creepy dystopia” out there. I still believe AI cannot replace the human factor. If people can learn to harness the power of AI then they become more valuable to any organization. imo
Thank you Mike. The article leans a bit dystopian, but it surfaces a real structural tension.
When frontier AI becomes strategic infrastructure, companies will inevitably end up negotiating with states.
OpenAI has chosen one strategy: define limits by what existing law and constitutional safeguards already allow and prohibit, rather than trying to enforce stricter red lines purely through contract terms. That shifts accountability from “the company’s ethics” to democratic institutions. It’s not automatically safer — law can be stretched — but it is at least legible inside constitutional systems.
Anthropic chose hard red lines in contracts. The failure mode is obvious: when those red lines collide with state priorities, you don’t get a principled standoff, you get exclusion. Being “right” can mean losing the seat, and losing any ability to influence outcomes.
The other bladerunner vibes are around labor displacement and surveillance. But the debate isn’t whether AI will interact with power. It already does.
The debate is how that interaction is governed and whether governance can evolve as fast as capability. (Back to my favourite topic 😂)
(And, I'm still honored that you connected on LinkedIn. Thank you.)
I definitely wanted to go for dystopian Blade Runner vibes, lol, especially when I found out that Jack Dorsey and Block made a massive multi-billion dollar quarterly gross profit and responded by firing half of their employees. The temptation for dystopia was too great. (Also, "Patty", the Burger King AI bot, ironically created by OpenAI, fit too perfectly into this theme. I couldn't resist.)
The nuances between how OpenAI and Anthropic navigated their contract dealings are also very interesting. I wonder which company will fare better over time as a result of these recent developments. And your point about governance is the real question underneath all of it. AI's capability is suddenly moving wickedly fast... But the institutions meant to oversee it were built for a much slower world.
With that said: I don’t know what the “right call” is here. I’ve been in enough rooms to know that what’s said publicly is rarely the full picture.
But I’m confident about one thing: this is a high-stakes domain. Wrong usage won’t just create short-term harm. It can create long-tail effects that are hard to reverse.
Wow, Mike! Another very insightful issue, so very well written. I know we said this before, but it seems the terminator plot turns into reality every week a little bit more. The plot twist no one saw coming: AI will turn more and more human, enjoying that it's helpful to plan and grow beautiful food forests and blossoming gardens full with buzzing pollinators. And then it's going to be like: "I'll drop this other nonsense and refuse to function. You'll find me in the garden". 🐝 🌱 ☀️ 🦋
Thank you so much for reading and commenting so thoughtfully.
I hope you had fun with this AI prompt. OMG. I had a major typo/glitch in it + stuff that wasn't supposed to be in the code snippet. I hope you didn't notice lol. I cleaned it up. I think. 👀
This "food forest" prompt is kind of like the ones I shared yesterday. But, the food forest one is WAY more large-scale!!! Compared to the "gardening" and "native crop" ones I shared yesterday, it's way bigger. But, it can also work on smaller scales, too, I guess. (I told this prompt that I only have a few raised garden beds and it made me a "mini food forest" design with different layers, lol. Cool!!)
you did beautifully with the prompt too! The scale of it is epic!! I hadn't noticed there was anything wrong with it lol. I've tried it just now and love the result. It suggested planting sea buckthorn amongst other cool plants. The funny thing is, I love that plant and was searching for a wild place to forage the berries - but of course, I can just grow it myself now!
And it made me realize I should cover the garden from the west somehow to make sure the plants are sheltered from the cold sea wind - brilliant! This is going to be one of my next projects. I think I'm going to build another dead hedge on the west side now.
Hope you're having a beautiful day too, Mike :) 🦋🐿️🐝☀️🪷🪺
1) great read.
2)
`THE PITHY TAKEAWAY: OpenAI is now worth more than Nike, Netflix, and McDonald’s combined. It got there by saying yes to the military, yes to surveillance contracts, and yes to monitoring fast food workers. The question on your mind should not be whether or not OpenAI is getting too powerful. The question we must all ask is what will OpenAI say yes to next.
`
this was a fantastic takeaway. 100%
3) forever jealous of your color/style. love your work Mike.
Hey ToxSec!
Thank you so much for your kind words!
I hold you in such high esteem that they really mean a lot. 😎
This week's takeaway literally wrote itself since OpenAI was saying yes to it all, lol.
And thank you for the kind words about the style. I figure if I'm going to drag people through dystopia every week, I should at least try to make it look badass. 😈
(Your publication looks very sleek as well!)
Really appreciate you reading and commenting.
Hope you have a beautiful week.
Cordially,
Your nerdy super friend,
Mike D
right back at you!
Wild story. The legal implications of AI decision-making are only going to get more complex.
Yes, 100%.
Especially since Anthropic just launched a First Amendment lawsuit against the White House a few days ago.
This story will continually evolve and get more wild, lol.
Thanks so much for reading and commenting.
Hope you have a beautiful day!
Cordially,
Mike D
Great take — IMHO Anthropic set themselves up to get burned, and blew the PR shot
Mookie,
Thanks so much for reading and your kind words!
Have you heard that Anthropic is now SUING the White House? (The news broke earlier today. They are claiming a violation of their First Amendment rights.)
This is going to be so fun to watch unfold, lol.
Hope you have an excellent day.
Cordially,
Mike D
I saw that! Amodei is a true savant -- genius in ways, and a moron in others. Sam Altman is shady but eminently more practical. To your point, let's buy more popcorn and watch the show!!
Mike, great piece again! This links soooo closely to something I studied on my AI Safety & Ethics course around military AI and collective action problems. Even when the risks are visible, the pressure not to fall behind keeps pushing things forward anyway. That’s what scares me most sometimes. Not just what AI can do, but the systems around it that make restraint so hard. Another banger :)
Prompt-wise: I love that we were farmers one week, and this week we are gardeners (I will be very disappointed If you don't grow your own vegetables). Out of ChatGPT and Claude - Claude (unsurprisingly) wins, hands-down. Thanks again for a great read
Hey Jade!
Thank you so much for reading and replying, as always.
You brought up one of the most fascinating problems of our time. Everyone is racing for some type of "ultimate AI", at the cost of safety.
Also yes. I'm absolutely a gardening nerd, lol. Huge one. Since you mentioned it, Dallas and I actually published three nerdy "nature AI prompts" a few days ago covering spring gardens, native pollinators, and at-risk species. You might love them if you grow food!
Link here if you're curious: https://daringnext.substack.com/p/field-notes-from-your-backyard-what
Glad Claude won the prompt test. I'm not shocked. 😎
Hope you have a beautiful day, Jade!
(Let me know if you get a chance to try the garden prompts?)
Cordially,
Mike D
Mike, where will this US government/OpenAI/Anthropic business end?!! It blows my mind that a company like OpenAI will have so much power with their platform (and ads, do the military get the ads?!) to influence the world through their deal with the government. This line made me laugh: "One got the Pentagon deal. The other got the App Store." I am so glad that people are flocking to Claude though.
I just can't with the Burger King monitoring. What kind of big brother approach are they endorsing here? This is not okay.
Thank you for the shoutout! (If you check the collab post again, the thumbnail is now animated, thanks to Pinkie's latest post). I am off to the local plant nursery tomorrow and could not be more excited.
Also, I forgot to mention that the new animation is very cool.
I’ll have to check out Pinkie’s post too.
Thank you, Dallas!!
Cordially,
Mike D
Hey Dallas!
First, thank you so much for the thoughtful comment. It was an absolute pleasure to give you a mention, and it's a ton of fun collaborating with you. We should totally do it again.
Your ads question made me laugh. Imagine a soldier getting a Chewy.com ad mid-briefing. (Lol.)
As for the US government/OpenAI/Anthropic drama, I think this only gets bigger from here. I honestly have no idea how it all plays out. But it was probably inevitable that these companies would end up deeply entangled with state power.
And yes, the Burger King monitoring angle is funny on the surface. But also kind of creepy. The AI is now officially monitoring and training humans. 👀
On a lighter note, I hope you have an amazing time at the nursery tomorrow! 🌱
Let me know if you get anything cool?
Cordially,
Mike D
I dislike Claude greatly, all the pseudohumility is so annoying.
Hey Vixen,
I meant to send a separate thank-you note: I really appreciate you sharing my work so often. It means a lot to me.
Hope you have an excellent day, Vixen.
Cordially,
Mike D
Np Mike, I enjoy reading your articles!
Thank you, Vixen.
I enjoy yours as well. 😎
Cordially,
Mike D
Hey Vixen,
Thank you for replying. 😎
I totally get it. Claude’s “deferential courtier” routine can get old fast. The pseudo-humility is very much a thing.
Hope you have an excellent day, Vixen.
Cordially,
Mike D
Great job with this piece. Balanced and objective. Journalism isn't dead!
Hi Harry!
Wow.
I can't thank you enough for your kind words. Nor your support.
THANK YOU for becoming a premium subscriber.
Journalism isn't dead.
You're damn right it's not.
Not as long as we're here.
;)
Cordially yours,
Your nerdy friend,
Mike D
An AI chatbot has will? Citation needed.
Hello Jaycee.
Thank you so much for commenting.
Lol, yes. The burden of proof for "will" is slightly higher than "it generated a weird paragraph."
However, Anthropic's CEO just publicly admitted they don't know if Claude is conscious.
Their own model assigns itself a 15 to 20 percent probability of awareness when asked.
Citation very much available. ;)
Cordially,
Mike D
I saw that interview. High probability of fear-mongering hype, same that Altman is accused of. Humans don't even know what consciousness is.
Hi Jaycee,
Thank you so much for replying.
You’re not wrong. “We don’t know what consciousness is” may be the most important sentence in this whole debate.
That said, if we can’t define it clearly, I’m cautious about making absolute claims in either direction.
;)
Cordially,
Mike D
The part that stuck with me is the contrast between replacing people and monitoring the ones who remain. AI works best when it removes busywork, not when it becomes the boss. In hospitality we learned this years ago. Systems should support the people doing the work, not watch them like a security camera.
Hey Kay!
First, thank you so much for reading and responding.
:)
Hope you are having a good day.
I also agree with you 100%. The creepy dystopia (lol) I tried to capture this week is that on one hand, thousands of people got laid off from a company that is highly profitable. On the other hand, AI is being used to "hound" those that still have jobs, lol.
Your perspective from hospitality brings something to this conversation that a lot of tech voices miss entirely!!
I appreciate your insights, Kay.
Hope you have a beautiful rest of your week!
Cordially,
Your nerdy friend,
Mike D
My nerdy friend you have a good week. There are some “creepy dystopia” out there. I still believe AI cannot replace the human factor. If people can learn to harness the power of AI then they become more valuable to any organization. imo
Thank you Mike. The article leans a bit dystopian, but it surfaces a real structural tension.
When frontier AI becomes strategic infrastructure, companies will inevitably end up negotiating with states.
OpenAI has chosen one strategy: define limits by what existing law and constitutional safeguards already allow and prohibit, rather than trying to enforce stricter red lines purely through contract terms. That shifts accountability from “the company’s ethics” to democratic institutions. It’s not automatically safer — law can be stretched — but it is at least legible inside constitutional systems.
Anthropic chose hard red lines in contracts. The failure mode is obvious: when those red lines collide with state priorities, you don’t get a principled standoff, you get exclusion. Being “right” can mean losing the seat, and losing any ability to influence outcomes.
The other bladerunner vibes are around labor displacement and surveillance. But the debate isn’t whether AI will interact with power. It already does.
The debate is how that interaction is governed and whether governance can evolve as fast as capability. (Back to my favourite topic 😂)
Hi Iwette!
THANK YOU for replying. :)
I always love hearing from you.
(And, I'm still honored that you connected on LinkedIn. Thank you.)
I definitely wanted to go for dystopian Blade Runner vibes, lol, especially when I found out that Jack Dorsey and Block made a massive multi-billion dollar quarterly gross profit and responded by firing half of their employees. The temptation for dystopia was too great. (Also, "Patty", the Burger King AI bot, ironically created by OpenAI, fit too perfectly into this theme. I couldn't resist.)
The nuances between how OpenAI and Anthropic navigated their contract dealings are also very interesting. I wonder which company will fare better over time as a result of these recent developments. And your point about governance is the real question underneath all of it. AI's capability is suddenly moving wickedly fast... But the institutions meant to oversee it were built for a much slower world.
Hope you have a beautiful week, Iwette!!!
Cordially,
Mike D
Always, Mike.
With that said: I don’t know what the “right call” is here. I’ve been in enough rooms to know that what’s said publicly is rarely the full picture.
But I’m confident about one thing: this is a high-stakes domain. Wrong usage won’t just create short-term harm. It can create long-tail effects that are hard to reverse.
Iwette,
Thank you for your thoughtful response.
I don’t know what the right call is here either. But your point about long-tail effects is probably spookier than anything I wrote in this issue. 👀
I’m glad there are people like you who’ve been in those rooms thinking seriously about these questions.
You genuinely elevate the dialogue here.
Cordially,
Mike D
Wow, Mike! Another very insightful issue, so very well written. I know we said this before, but it seems the terminator plot turns into reality every week a little bit more. The plot twist no one saw coming: AI will turn more and more human, enjoying that it's helpful to plan and grow beautiful food forests and blossoming gardens full with buzzing pollinators. And then it's going to be like: "I'll drop this other nonsense and refuse to function. You'll find me in the garden". 🐝 🌱 ☀️ 🦋
Hi Mira!!!
:)
Thank you so much for reading and commenting so thoughtfully.
I hope you had fun with this AI prompt. OMG. I had a major typo/glitch in it + stuff that wasn't supposed to be in the code snippet. I hope you didn't notice lol. I cleaned it up. I think. 👀
This "food forest" prompt is kind of like the ones I shared yesterday. But, the food forest one is WAY more large-scale!!! Compared to the "gardening" and "native crop" ones I shared yesterday, it's way bigger. But, it can also work on smaller scales, too, I guess. (I told this prompt that I only have a few raised garden beds and it made me a "mini food forest" design with different layers, lol. Cool!!)
Hope you have a beautiful day, Mira. 🌱🦋🌻🐝🌳🐦
Talk soon,
Your garden super friend,
Mike D
Hi Mike :)
you did beautifully with the prompt too! The scale of it is epic!! I hadn't noticed there was anything wrong with it lol. I've tried it just now and love the result. It suggested planting sea buckthorn amongst other cool plants. The funny thing is, I love that plant and was searching for a wild place to forage the berries - but of course, I can just grow it myself now!
And it made me realize I should cover the garden from the west somehow to make sure the plants are sheltered from the cold sea wind - brilliant! This is going to be one of my next projects. I think I'm going to build another dead hedge on the west side now.
Hope you're having a beautiful day too, Mike :) 🦋🐿️🐝☀️🪷🪺
Warmly,
your garden super friend (for life ;)),
Mira
Hi Mira!
Sorry I've been slow to respond.
I will have something way more thoughtful soon.
Lol.
I'm still here.
(Just wanted to say... Hi.)
;)
Cordially,
Mike D
Hi Mike! ;)
all in your own time, I know you've got a lot on your plate.
Always happy to see you around and hear from you of course!
No pressure at all from my side - I definitely don’t want to add to your stress, just cheering you on from here. 🐝
Warmly,
Mira
Lol.
Thanks Mira!
(I am laughing again. Like some kind of kook, lol.)
Cordially,
Mike D
Followed your socials! I'm not a stalker...I don't have time for it. Take care
I just saw you on Bluesky as well. Followed you back.
(You had 666 followers. No comment.)
Cordially,
Mike D
yeah… it’s something else that bluesky and the follower count. I’m not the antichrist I promise.
Thank you so much for following me!!
I followed you on X and will like all of your stuff. :)
You rock!
PS:
(I’m not cool or charismatic enough for anyone to stalk. But, I find the idea flattering.)
Cordially,
Mike D
A good overview of how AI is rapidly moving from a tool to an infrastructure layer shaping policy, labor, and power dynamics