Sam Altman picks a fight with Anthropic over its unsettling new ad

Anthropic's latest ad, "There's hope in hard questions," drew backlash for doomer-ish imagery, including a burning house, facial-recognition surveillance, and rows of tombstones, over voiceovers asking "Can AI be trusted?" Sam Altman kicked off the mockery, posting "i thought this was satire, kept looking for the handle to be spelled c1audeai or something." Altman went further, jabbing that "hard questions are great but only if we deem you worthy enough to not silently downgrade you," a reference to Anthropic's Fable 5 guardrails that route sensitive queries to weaker models and throttle suspected distillation attempts. The spat adds to Altman's simultaneous feuds with Apple and Elon Musk.

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