ChatGPT vs. Claude: Ethics, Privacy, and Which AI Teacherpreneurs Should Use

Jess and Amanda discuss major AI platforms for teacherpreneurs, focusing on ChatGPT versus Claude. Jess admits she used ChatGPT exclusively until Amanda introduced her to Claude about four to six months ago. Amanda explains that Claude is Anthropic’s large language model, led by CEO Dario Amodei (a former OpenAI employee), and describes Anthropic’s emphasis on ethics and user privacy settings, including an option not to let the company see chats. They discuss reports about a Pentagon/Department of Defense controversy in which Anthropic set “red lines,” including no use for fully autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance, contrasted with OpenAI’s involvement. They also reference Anthropic’s “Constitution of Claude,” framing Claude as values-driven rather than rule-driven. Jess and Amanda compare outputs and prompting styles, describing Claude as more long-form and complex (a “PhD”) and ChatGPT as simpler with strong brand recognition.

00:00 Cold Open Banter
00:39 Tell All AI Showdown
02:03 Podcast Intro Theme
02:41 Why Jess Switched
04:55 What Claude Is
07:26 Ethics and Privacy Angle
08:43 Pentagon Contract Controversy
11:30 Jess Reacts Values Clash
14:48 Claude Constitution Explained
17:19 Head to Head User Experience
21:02 When Bots Trash Talk
22:47 Grok Joke Wrap Up
23:21 Final Outro and CTA

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Hey teacher, entrepreneur, frensies. It's your host, Jess, and I'm with my buddy Amanda. If you're on our YouTube channel, we both have little, my coworker calls them chotch, chotchkis. We have little toys. And Amanda has one that looks like it's for a ferret, but I'm sure it's for a cat. And I have a little Grogu that sits on my shoulder. There's actually a magnet that'll go underneath his butt. It'll sit there. So check out our YouTube channel, two wacky teacherpreneurs, tell all. Today we are really gonna tell all, and we are going to talk about major AI platforms. We are going to dissect ChatGPT versus Claude. And I'm just gonna be real with you. Amanda thinks I'm a crazy loon about this, but I had never heard of Claude until I started talking about it with Amanda. Like Amanda's really in the know about these things, and she's having a really good time with her cat toy right now. So I did not know about Claude, and then over the last, I would say six months, I become more aware of like, oh, like, because I just use ChatGPT all the time for everything. And then one day Amanda's like, oh, that's kind of icky. Why are you doing that? And I was like, what do you mean it's icky? And like she opened my mind to this whole other, like that there's these other platforms we could use. And I know as a teacher entrepreneur listening, you might be using, you might be using one of these platforms. So we wanna, we wanna share it, shed the light. Like Amanda opened my eyes, we wanna open your eyes to different uh benefits and things you should think about when you're choosing like where you're writing your prompts and you're getting these ideas to grow your business. Where should you be doing it at?

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Welcome to the Wacky Teacher Preneurs Podcast. Your hosts, Jess and Amanda, have been friends and teacher preneurs for years. Along with their successes, they've had lots of failures, foibles, and fumbles. And now they're here to share it all with you. Stay tuned for some funny times and awesome business insights. Let's go behind the scenes of their teacher businesses now. Raw, unfiltered, real. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

All right, welcome back to the show. Me and Amanda are sitting here. Amanda has a little Daisy behind her. Always love that name, Daisy. And I just have some weirdo mountains, but I like the color scheme. So I was like, I'll go with this. Today we're gonna be talking about ChatGPT versus Claude. And I was very honest and vulnerable with you that I always just use Chat GPT until Amanda slapped me around a bit. It did take me a while to really grasp what she was saying about Chat GPT, but she's Amanda reads a lot of newspaper articles, listens to a lot of podcasts, audiobooks. She's always in the know about things. And sometimes I'm not because I mean it's just because of our lifestyles. Like this year, Amanda's not in the classroom. I am in the classroom and I have this monstrous commute. So I don't know. I mean, I do listen to the daily, I read the New York Times, but I feel like Amanda's a little more up on things. And like I said, probably if I'm guessing, I would say about six months ago, maybe five, maybe four, four to six months ago. Amanda was like, dude, you need to start using Claude for like everything. And I was like, what the hell is Claude? And I was kind of sassy about it a little bit, like because I was so like, I had been going through like this friendship breakup, not with Amanda, with someone else. And I had been using ChatGPT as almost a form of therapy and like also to distract me from things. Like I was using it more than I probably should have been. And I didn't even know there were these other platforms that people use for information. So, I mean, I think Chat GPT is a household name. And if you're listening to this, you know what it is, and maybe you use it. But Amanda, could you just like briefly introduce what Claude is and how do you even remember how you heard about it? Or like what do you know about it? And now we're both like the biggest Claude fans that will like today. I got mad at Claude because I prompted it and it told me to use Chat GPT for something. And I was like, Claude, what's wrong with you? So, anyway, Amanda, over to you.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Okay, yeah, I definitely feel like I get a lot of this information from one of my favorite technology podcasts called Hard Fork. It kind of I get a lot of inspiration and laughs from that podcast. So I I highly recommend listening to that. It's a New York Times uh technology podcast called Hard Fork, and so a lot of what I've learned is from them. Um, but um Dario Amade is the like CEO of Anthropic, and Claude is their large language model, their AI model. So, right, like Chat GPT is Sam Altman. He is the CEO of Chat GPT, and their company is open AI. So there's anthropic versus open AI. There's Derry, Dario Amade versus Sam Altman. And I think what's really interesting is um Dario Amade used to work for Chat GPT, used to work for OpenAI. Um, he worked for them. I'm looking at a Wikipedia article right now, which I love Wikipedia now. Like, I don't know about you, but Wikipedia is really becoming one of my favorite websites because I just feel like it has really like factual information, you know, that you can rely on, which is not what Wikipedia used to be. But, anyways, um any so he uh was working for OpenAI in 2016 and he left and founded Anthropic with apparently his sister in 2021. And um, he is currently worth a lot of money, billions of dollars. Um Forbes estimates he's worth seven billion. Um, but he has done a lot of writing, like a lot of essays um written by him about the risks of AI. And he, I think, really um wanted to, you know how like companies they have to be known for something, something in like something um like Chat GPT was sort of the first large language model that everyone started to use and started to hear about, and it became really popular super fast. Um but Claude came on the scene with more of a like ethics um approach, an approach of like, hey, you user can choose your privacy settings. Like you can choose to not let us see your chats. And so that was what really turned me on to Claude. Um I feel like I don't know how long I've been on Claude. I can look at the dates, but I think it's been a let me look, because I have all my chats here, like from the very beginning, you know, like of talking to Claude. Um, oh my gosh, what? It says four months ago. So I guess I've been using Claude for only four months. It seems like so much longer than that. Um and the first thing I asked Claude four months ago was craft compelling podcast episode titles. Um, but I've been using ChatGPT for years, you know, since it first came out. Like I was one of the first people to be like, I want to try this, you know. Um, but since um starting with Claude, there's been this recent like um controversy with the US Department of Defense, the Pentagon, um, because they want to use AI um, you know, to do all sorts of things in the government, right? For defense or department of defense, depart department of war, whatever. Um, and anthropic was already working with them, Claude, um, and they were negotiating a contract, but um Dario Amade, he said, Yes, we want to work with you, we want to be involved, but we have some red lines, we have some like boundaries that we cannot, you know, like we can't cross because this company really is trying to stand for for like acting in responsible ways with AI, and they're trying to really like you know respond to like the safety, like we need this, these tools to be safe for our country and for the our users, and so I just I that's why I really love anthropic because I feel like they're prioritizing that, but basically they their red lines were and they told the Department of Defense that they don't want their AI, Claude, to be used for fully autonomous weapons, so they don't want AI to be like out there, you know, like using weapons without some sort of human involved, which I feel like is yeah, like of course, why would why would the government want autonomous weapons, you know, um, or mass domestic surveillance? And the Department of Defense came back, Pete Pete Heggseth, and said, you know, like, no, and we're gonna blacklist you. And so it's just been this crazy controversy. And what's really weird is Sam Altman like agreed, right? And I'm like living in Silicon Valley, so that's another thing. Like, I feel like I do kind of I'm in the Bay Area, and all of this is stuff is happening here, and he agreed with Dario Amade. Like, yeah, that sounds reasonable to ask that the government not use our tools for that, but then he goes around and like signs the same contract, so it's kind of like weird. Like, I'm not sure what happened, but ChatGPT is now being used by um the Pentagon and the Department of War, and it's not really clear what how the contract is any different than what they were proposing with Anthropic. So I don't know, that's like a very like a lot of information. What are you thinking right now, Jess?

SPEAKER_01 11:32

Like, wow, that's kind of blowing my mind. I mean, I've heard about the you told me about what Claude said no to, like a couple weeks ago, or maybe a week ago, you admit, yeah. You mean Dario Amade? Yeah, like well, the Claude peeps, right? Like they're like, uh, that doesn't sound right. And they were two like really reasonable, normal things, right? But then I didn't know that the other uh competitor that they actually were like, okay, no problem. Like, did they actually say that like there could be autonomous weapons now? Like, that's really scary and weird. And I mean, on a personal level, I had heard that Chat GPT has donated a lot of money to a political party that I don't really support, and that was one thing that kind of like I had read so much about that that I was like, oh ew, like that doesn't really align with my values, and that's why I personally, but like this is a cr, this is a this is so wild. Like I wish everybody knew, like they're creating these cute, like I'm in a I'm in this pen pal group. There's 60,000 ladies in this pen pal group, and they all create these chat GPT posters every day. There's like 50, 60, 100 posters in there, and I just I wish they knew like some of this stuff, like because some of the stuff on their posters kind of goes against the ideals and values of this company, right? So cool. Sorry, it's it's wild. So okay. Um can I tell you about how I was asking for AI tools and how Claude like had an argument against using it for teacher entrepreneurs? Like, should I bring that up this episode? Or like Claude was basically telling me, like, yeah, it might not be the best for you guys.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

Like it was weird. That is weird, and I do like I feel like this episode is like, should you use Claude or you should you use Chat GPT? Um, and well, I just I want to talk, I want to uh give a resource in this episode. Um, because in my opinion, you should use Claude, you should be anti-Chat GPT. Um, and there's a lot of reasons for that. And I think that I've kind of outlined a little bit of them um just with this whole controversy with the Pentagon, um, and just the fact that Sam, like Dario Amade, used to work for um open AI and was worried about the ethics and and what they were doing over there, and started his own company for the purpose of prioritizing ethics and responsibility towards society and things like that. So that personally, like I think that Claude is the way to go. Um, but you're telling me, so yeah, share what Claude, well, first of all, they also created a constitution. So the people at um Anthropic, they have created a constitution, a vision for Claude's character. And I'm gonna link it to this episode because it's really, really interesting. And their their views of how to train their large language model, their Claude, um, is very different from other AI companies because they feel like they're parenting it and they give their reasons for why. And I think this answers the question of why Claude is directing teacherpreneurs to Chat GPT, because Claude has character, it has moral like underpinnings. Um, and it doesn't necessarily like I was looking at um, so it's this is a quote from the article. We generally, this is from the constitution of Claude. We generally favor cultivating good values and judgments over strict rules and decision procedures, and we try to explain any rules we do want Claude to follow. By good values, quote, we don't mean a fixed set of quote value, correct values, but rather genuine care and ethical motivation combined with the practical wisdom to apply this skillfully in real situations. Um, we discuss this in more detail in the section on being broadly ethical. So basically, like ChatGPT um and let's say what are Gemini, um, Grok, they are coding in rules, right? Whereas open AI, not open AI, sorry, anthropic and Claude, they're more trying to train their model to behave in an a moral way. I'm not sure how this works in the coding world, or like I I don't even think they know fully how AI is functioning. But anyways, I just think that that might be why Claude is being like so what is that called? Like when you're um humble or something? Tell us what what you asked Claude and then what Claude's answer was.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Well, we're gonna do another episode on like tools, AI tools you can use for your business. And the first one that Claude told me was Chat GPT, but then I noticed that it didn't list itself. And I said, Claude, why did you pick ChatGPT and not yourself? And then it said back to me, honestly, this is a fair challenge. Uh for pure conversational brainstorming and content content drafting. I would argue that Claude, me, is stronger than Chat GPT right now. But like the reasons it's stronger is kind of a turnoff for some people. Like it does a lot more long form writing, whereas Chat GPT always gives you a nice bulleted list, and it, you know, it's a little easier to comprehend and read on Chat GPT. Uh, also, Claude prefers complex layered instructions more, and not everybody writes complex layered prompts. And now I think teachers of all people would, but I mean, I think me and you probably do because when I made the switch, where Amanda finally pushed me over the edge, telling me all this information a few months ago, I was like, I told I I ran like when I went home that night, I told my husband about it. I was like, it's like ChatGPT is has a high school diploma and Claude has a PhD. Like that's how I feel like when I'm talking to the two. Like Chat GPT, everything is so basic and so simple. It's easy to comprehend. And it's like, it's like if a teach, you know, a teacher from different, you know, walks of life, you can tell when a teacher has really deep depth of knowledge. That's how I felt like talking to Claude. I'm like, it's like Claude's a doctor. And I was telling Anthony, my husband, about this. And he's just like, he doesn't use either. He thinks they're both dumb, right? He's just like, who cares? But whatever makes you happy, who who cares though? I'm never gonna use those. I never need them, so I'm never gonna use them. And I'm just like, yeah, but Claude, okay, this is what I said at ChatGPT, and this is what I said to Claude. And then I told him the two different responses, and he did admit he's like, wow, there's a lot more to read when you ask Claude a question. And I mean, I think so. I mean, what it's telling me here is like one, Chat GPT has huge strong brand recognition. So if you're gonna turn people on to using AI in their business, they hear Chat GPT and they they recognize it and they accept it just like they do Kleenex for tissues. Like that's what I'm like, that is true. Even though Puffs Plus is way better than Kleenex, people are choosing Chat GPT, it's brand recognition, right? It's like the McDonald's of AI right now. Yeah. And so, and and so like I uh I I I said, is ChatGPT actually the best tool or just the most famous one? Is that what you're trying to tell me? Right. And then it said that we should do, and then it actually said you guys should do a head-to-head comparison episode on this topic. So then it gave me more, you know, more details. But I think, like you said, it's just trying to be ethical and explain what might be the easiest for people to use, even though it's going against its own self-interest in recommending its competitor. And I think that's just the ethics showing when you're talking to it. Because if you mention Claude to ChatGPT, Chat GPT shuts it down. It's like Claude is stupid and I am smart, and Claude is hard to deal with, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, because I've done it before. There was one time I didn't like the response that Claude gave me, and I got mad at Claude. I went back to ChatGPT and I said, Chat GPT, Claude just said this about this prompt. And ChatGPT is like, I roll. Of course, Claude said that. Claude's an idiot, you know, and I was just like, That's hilarious.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

You're making them fight with each other, but Claude's taking the moral high ground. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Oh my god. Always, always. I and I do this a lot because I'll get an answer I don't really like from Claude sometimes. And I mean, maybe it's happened like three or four times, and I'm like, Gonna go. I'm like a little toddler. Like, I'm gonna go ask Chat GPT. I'm gonna go ask my other friend if this shirt is ugly. And Chat GPT always is so mean about Claude. And I do wonder if it's some of it's some of this has to do with these employees leaving and these two people's different perspectives on things and ideologies. I mean, it's kind of crazy uh to have them bot battle each other because Claude is just very diplomatic. Claude is almost like a lawyer in a courtroom, but not taking a side. And Chat GPT, it really is. It's like a it's like a McDonald's worker spitting in a hamburger, right? Like, butoey, I hate Claude, eat the sandwich. And I'm just like, wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

So can we you said that Claude has a PhD, Chat GPT has a high school diploma. What does Grok have?

SPEAKER_01 22:56

A prison record. Grok is an inmate. All right, I think this is a good place to start. Yeah, Grok got locked up when Grok was 16 and hasn't been out of jail since. Yes, I think this is a lovely episode. Lovely.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

Thanks for listening to this extremely serious episode. Brought to you by some truly wacky teacherpreneurs. Visit our website, wackyteacherpreneurs.com, to get more support growing your business. Please leave us a five-star review. And remember, if you share this podcast with ten other people, you'll have good luck forever.