Kinda Brief
Posts
How to follow tech news during a holiday family visit

How to follow tech news during a holiday family visit

I got on an airplane and one of the most dramatic tech news stories of the year dropped.

November 22, 2023

OpenAI Updates

The other week, I let you know I’d publish on an adjusted schedule around the Thanksgiving holiday. “I’ll be traveling for Thanksgiving with my family, and the rhythm of news around the holidays gets funky, so I’m not going to stress about trying to hit specific publishing deadlines until December.” Oh boy, did the news ever get funky. Last Friday, I got to the airport, finished up sending that week’s newsletter, and hopped on a plane to Atlanta. Then, news broke that the OpenAI board had fired their CEO, Sam Altman. Since then, the story has evolved fast, with new information coming out daily. It now looks like Altman will be back in charge of OpenAI with a new board, but that could all change by the time you read this, given how this story has moved.

The scene from 30 Rock where Liz is talking to Jack and says, “what a week, huh?” Then Jack replies, “Lemon, it’s Wednesday.”

I’m not going to try to recap every twist and turn here. Instead, I want to give you a rundown of the articles, podcasts, and journalists I’ve used to keep up with the OpenAI story. Here are the places I’ve been checking for good OpenAI updates.

The Verge - If you’ve been reading Kinda Brief for a while, you’ve probably noticed I’m a fan of The Verge’s reporting generally, but I think they’ve been doing a great job covering the twists and turns of the OpenAI saga.
Kara Swisher - Kara Swisher’s also been fantastic at breaking new updates and putting the events into context. In addition to following her on threads, I’d recommend checking out her podcasts, for example, this episode where she interviews Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Casey Newton / Platformer / Hardfork - Casey’s newsletter Platformer is one of my favorites and a big influence on how I structure Kinda Brief, but I’ve also found his podcast with Kevin Roose at NYT to be very helpful for keeping up with this story in particular.

In addition to the play-by-play of this Succession by way of Google Meet calls drama, I think it’s important to start trying to understand the culture inside the AI world. Because from what I’ve learned, that culture is really weird. There’s a pseudoreligious feeling to how some factions of the AI development world talk about the risks and potential of what they are building. If you want to start getting to know that aspect of this story, I highly recommend this piece by Karen Hao and Charlie Warzel for The Atlantic. You might also want to check out this issue of Ryan Broderick’s Garbage Day if you are ready for the next level of Very Online Person™️ analysis on religious schism happening in the AI world.

Finally, I just want to say you can stay off Twitter, sorry X. I know a lot of the players in this story were posting updates there. I found Threads, podcast updates, and news articles to be more than sufficient to keep me informed this weekend in near real-time. Twitter is dead; take a cue from the advertisers in the other big tech story of the past weekend, and stop investing your time in the racist shell of what’s left there.