Sam Altman tried to stomp out a small fire started by his competitor, but he mostly just created a lot of smoke.
I think his response to Anthropic’s SuperBowl ads, which mock chatGPT’s plans to launch ads, is worth an analysis.
By spending more than half his text arguing from a place of being personally hit (“We are not stupid,” “They are dishonest”), he achieved the opposite of what a leader should do.
This is heat, not warmth. It burns, but it doesn’t invite anyone to sit down and listen.
When a leader attacks a competitor this aggressively, they don’t look strong; they look worried.
And so, Altman achieved a status drop. He stepped down from his position as the visionary builder to get into a mud-fight. He forced his audience to look at the mess, rather than looking at the future. He proved that Anthropic’s ad got under his skin.
The irony is that he actually had the perfect wood for a warm, inviting fire: “This time belongs to the builders.”
That is a message that brings people together. It offers hope and agency. But because he put it at the very end, after all the reactive defense, the wood was already wet. He achieved a defense of his company, but he failed to light a path for his users.
You don’t beat a rival by stomping out their torch; you beat them by building a bonfire so bright that no one looks anywhere else and so inviting that people come closer.
Keep lighting the path,
Michael
