“Sam Altman’s best case scenario is that abundance lifts everyone up to a much higher standard, but it also exacerbates inequality. That was his favorite outcome.” — Keith Teare
Is this the week that AI finally grew up? That Was the Week newsletter publisher Keith Teare believes so. OpenAI launched ChatGPT 5.5 and Image 2.0, both outstanding, and pivoted Codex from a programmer’s tool into the central interface for everything. Meanwhile Google committed up to $40 billion to Anthropic in infrastructure investment and Amazon added $5 billion. Two maturing axes emerging: OpenAI–Nvidia on one side, Anthropic–Google–Amazon on the other.
The bigger question is the impact of AI on work. Will the durable jobs in our AI economy be in the relational sectors — nurses, therapists, teachers, craft brewers, live performers, care workers? Human-to-human interaction will be the scarcest resource in this supposedly abundant new world. Sam Altman’s best-case scenario: abundance lifts everyone up but exacerbates inequality. As Reid Hoffman noted, technology’s arc bends toward access, but not on its own. So who will provide this access? Silicon Valley still has a lot of growing up to do.
Five Takeaways
• Codex Is Now the Central App. OpenAI shifted gravity from the model to the user interface. Codex does more things, accesses all the models, and should replace ChatGPT as everyone’s starting point. Less tokens, much better output, functional free tier. Freemium working.
• Dario’s Adolescent-Teenager Week. Opus 4.7 launched with hallucinations and throttling. Then Anthropic removed paid features, got a furious backlash, reinstated them in twenty-four hours. Reactive, adolescent — exactly the opposite of what OpenAI was showing.
• $45 Billion and Two Axes. Google: up to $40 billion. Amazon: $5 billion. Data centers, TPUs, Trainium — all competing with Nvidia. Two separate technological axes now forming: OpenAI–Nvidia vs Anthropic–Google–Amazon.
• The Future of Work Is Human-to-Human. The durable jobs in an AI economy are in the relational sector: nurses, therapists, teachers, craft brewers, live performers, care workers. Not prompt engineering. Not monitoring AI. Human-to-human. Nursing is already the most popular university major.
• Sam Altman’s Best Case: More Inequality. Three possible AI futures. His favourite: abundance lifts everyone up but exacerbates inequality. Reid Hoffman’s corrective: technology’s arc needs human agency and political will. Keith’s gloss via Heinlein: the heritage check — a monthly dividend to all humans from the automated surplus.
About the Guest
Keith Teare is a British-American entrepreneur, investor, and publisher of the That Was the Week newsletter. He is a co-founder of TechCrunch.
References
That Was the Week newsletter by Keith Teare: thatwa.st
Greg Brockman and Sam Altman, Core Memory podcast
Reid Hoffman, “Faith in the Possible,” Substack
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.
Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow
Chapters:
00:00:31 Adulting: is this the week AI finally grew up?
00:01:05 Brockman and Altman on Core Memory
00:03:15 ChatGPT 5.5, Image 2.0, and the Codex pivot
00:05:47 Yann LeCun on Dario and the labor market
00:06:28 Anthropic’s awful first four days
00:07:38 Feature removal and the twenty-four-hour backlash
00:08:24 $40 billion from Google, $5 billion from Amazon
00:09:19 Two axes: OpenAI–Nvidia vs Anthropic–Google–Amazon
00:11:00 The future of work: relational vs automated sector
00:29:37 Reid Hoffman: technology’s arc bends toward access
00:30:16 Altman’s three futures: best case is more inequality
00:31:56 The heritage check and the post-money economy
00:33:58 Victoria Hetherington and AI companionship