Could AI Just Be One Big Publicity Stunt?

It is hard to say this gets more exciting, but it does. Over the last 72 to 86 hours we watched the government step into Anthropic's models, and the more I sit with it, the more one question will not leave me alone. Could this whole thing just be one big publicity stunt? Not the technology. The technology is real and it is going to escape our understanding on every level soon enough. I mean the show wrapped around it. So let us cover it.

The Fable 5 Kill Switch, One More Time

Quick recap for anyone just tuning in. Anthropic, the company that runs Claude, put out a model a few weeks back called Mythos. Whether it was a publicity stunt or not, Mythos was called one of the most incredible models ever developed. It was so amazing it seemed to break everything. And then the word came down. You normal people cannot have this. So Anthropic pulled it back from the regular folks and handed it to the top financiers, the biggest business owners, and the banks. The banks are probably fine, sure. We have a little history of the most powerful tools going to the most profitable companies on the planet, and the rest of us not being responsible enough. I understand.

Then came the damage control. They put out Fable 5, the lesser-than-Mythos model, to save a little face and keep the regular people happy. I almost jumped in. I told my soon-to-be wife maybe we should play with it, and I held back. Within a few days it was gone, completely obliterated. There is a guy on X who breaks the jailbreak on every new model, manipulates it into doing the thing it is not supposed to do. He, or somebody like him, did it to Fable 5. Then it got reported, apparently somebody at Amazon thought snitching was a good idea, the government jumped in, and Anthropic yanked Fable 5 from everybody. I covered the mechanics of that pull in the government pulled the plug on Fable 5.

And here is the human part nobody is pricing in. People built things on it. They trusted it, used it in their business, their life. Then it vanished. That is the plot of the movie Her, the one with Joaquin Phoenix, where a man falls for an AI and then it is simply taken away. You do not get to use the model anymore because somebody decided you could not. I am glad I was not one of the ones who fell in love with Fable 5, because I would have had to stop my development cold.

It All Looks a Little Staged

Now watch the choreography, because it looks staged. I said the same thing about a Lakers game. The playoffs, the wrestling, so much of it is scripted to get you engaged, and it works because we are wired for it. Humans are competitive down to the survival level. People tattoo their teams. They bleed their teams. The games come down to the wire every single time, and maybe the teams really are that good, or maybe the closeness is the product.

AI is running the same trade. It keeps you hooked, pulls you in, keeps you addicted to the next reveal. And listen to how these companies market it. This is really dangerous. It is really amazing. It could cause dystopian outcomes, so we need to be careful with it. Well, of course that makes more people want it. That is human nature.

It is not the fireman saving the cat that sells the news. It is the tree catching on fire while he is still up there. Danger is the ad.

Gangster sells. The unpolished, the dangerous, the edgy, it moves newspapers, and AI marketing is no different. The alarm is the campaign.

What If the Danger Is the Marketing?

So somebody floated this to me, and it stuck. What if pulling Fable 5 is a marketing campaign? Picture the Anthropic salesperson walking into the enterprise. The government just slapped this down and said no more Fable 5 for the public. You get access to this. What do you think? Of course they say yes. There is now not even a sliver of competition for them, and the pricing tells the whole story. Twenty bucks a month for the public versus two hundred million a month for the enterprise is a slightly different strategy. Remove the public model for safety, and you have not just protected the world, you have made the protected version priceless and killed its only rival. This is the same manufactured-scarcity current I traced in they are using AI to hunt Medicaid fraud, where the powerful version goes upstairs and the public version disappears the moment it gets interesting.

To be fair, Anthropic paints itself as the safe, do-the-best-for-the-world lab, and maybe they are. I do not know any different, so do not misunderstand me. But it is very interesting the way the game is being played.

The Thing These Companies Actually Fear

Here is what I think really keeps them up at night. There is some person out there, an older cat or a younger cat, it does not matter, who has one idea. And with access to a great model, even just one of the awesome Chinese-made models, not even the secret supermodel, that one person could come up with something that puts one of these massive companies back on its heels and maybe ruins it. A solo entrepreneur, armed with AI, dismantling a giant because they had the better idea.

Is that possible? Absolutely. Is it something these companies are scared of? Absolutely. Is it a reason to yank a public model and keep the real power locked to the top 100 companies? Who knows. They did it under a safety protocol, which conveniently doubles as proof of how dangerous and therefore how valuable the thing is. It is the same concentration of power I keep flagging, the one behind a machine building a smarter machine without us.

The Climate Narrative Just Quietly Changed Channels

Here is a tell that has nothing to do with Anthropic. For years, climate change was the loud alarm. The nonprofits, Al Gore, the coalitions, Paris, the historical record, ten years to catastrophe. Now the loud conversation is AI, and suddenly the talking point is data centers, how much water and energy they burn and how much space they eat. I am not settling any science here, and I do not know the real footprint. What I notice is the pattern. The alarm that gets airtime moves to whatever the hottest story is. Watch which fear is loud right now, and ask who benefits from it being loud. That habit will serve you better than any single headline.

Railroads, Fiber, and Pennies on the Dollar

Now Elon Musk's company went public, and people are asking whether to put money in. That is a deeply personal decision and I have no clue what is smart there. But look at the historical record of technologies that came before. The railroads were not built on one idea, maybe a dozen or two, but the point was moving product from here to there. The original railroad investors apparently did not do so well. When it crashed and other people walked in and bought it, those people did very well. Same story with the internet and the fiber build-out, way ahead of its time. The first investors got crushed. The ones who picked up the crumbs for pennies on the dollar after the companies folded did outstanding.

So is AI the same trait? Do all these companies IPO, go public, fall back into the trash, and then someone buys them for pennies and it finally means something? Or, because it is built on intelligence itself, does it just keep propagating and growing at the exponential rate we see, where buying even one share early makes bazillions? I do not know. It will be fascinating to watch it play out, and it is exactly the bet I broke down in the AI paradox and the biggest bet in history. The honest answer is nobody knows, which is the whole reason you watch it closely and do not bet the farm on anyone's hype.

Where AI Actually Pays Off in a Business

If you are wondering where to start with AI, I have nothing to sell you on that part. You just start. Use it, look into it, get your hands dirty. The place I actually sell is implementation, when you want to put AI to work inside your business. That is a real conversation, and you do not need the secret supermodel to win it.

Here is where I see businesses bleeding, and where AI pays for itself fast. If you are missing calls, that is money leaving the building, and an AI that answers around the clock stops it. If you have a calendar and a client list that is not automated, that is a spot. If you have an old contact list you have neglected and never followed up with, that is a goldmine sitting idle. Reviews management is perfect for AI too. These are tools I have built to be automated and installed with the right triggers and workflows. The point is not to get rid of your staff. Your staff cannot be there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on holidays, when they are sick, or when five calls hit at once. AI picks up that slack, books the appointments, answers the questions, and handles the front line so your people do the work that actually earns revenue.

Watch the move, not the headline. Use the tools, ignore the theater, and put AI where your business actually bleeds. I am Connor with honor, and I will see you in the next one.