OpenAI Calls a ‘Code Red’ + Which Model Should I Use? + The Hard Fork Review of Slop
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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It's your answer to what should I watch? It's your money to save.
It's your song to analyze line by line.
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The New York Times. Find out more at nytimes.com slash your world.
Casey, how's it going? Good morning, Kevin. I am doing well, as well as can be expected given that I had a colonoscopy yesterday. Yes, I heard about this. How did it go? Well, I got a clean bill of health. I will say, though, there was one moment during the procedure that was sort of alarming to me.
What?
was that? Well, I had met, you know, the various nurses and the doctors and everyone was so friendly, you know, and was introducing themselves. But as they sort of put in the medicine to make me kind of go under, I noticed that there was one medical professional who was against the wall and she was scrolling through her phone. And the last thought I had before I went under was, I really hope she's not looking up how to do a colonoscopy. You know what I mean? Because she kind of had that look on her face. Like, I need to jog my memory about what I'm doing here. And I thought, oh, God, I hope she already knows.
No, she was on TikTok. She was live streaming your colonoscopy to her hundreds of thousands of followers.
I had that thought. I was like, could we get more or fewer viewers to the YouTube channel if we went live with my colonoscopy?
They're always saying, be authentic.
Exactly. Bring your whole self to work.
Or yourself whole. Yes. I'm Kevin Roos, a tech columnist at the New York Times.
I'm Casey Noon from Platformer. And this is Hard Fork. This week, OpenAI declares a code red. Why the competitive landscape in AI has Sam Altman scared. Then, how we're using all the latest AI models. And finally, we're heading back to the theater for the Hard Fork review of Slop.
Well, Casey, do you feel a little nervous energy, a certain frisson of tension in the air crackling through San Francisco these days?
Absolutely, Kevin. There's a chill on the back of my neck and an eerie silence as I walk down the streets of the mission. Yes, well, that is because OpenAI is in a Code Red! Code Red!
Now, as you will remember, a couple years ago on this show, we talked to Sunar Pichai, the CEO of Google, when they were in their own sort of code red period, which he said was not actually called code red. But someone over there was using that term. And that was sort of when they were... on their heels, taken aback by the surprise success of ChatGPT, and they were racing to get their own version of a chatbot out. And they were sort of in a corporate state of panic about this. That was their code red. Yes. But now we have a new code red, and it is an open AI. Sam Altman reportedly declared a code red this week about some worrying trends they're seeing with ChatGPT usage. And I think in general... Beyond just open AI, there's just been a lot happening at the frontier AI companies that we should talk about.
A lot of new models coming out, a lot of discussions about the sort of state of AI right now. So I thought today we should just kind of get into it all, starting with this Code Red.
Yeah, let's talk about it. Because, you know, for listeners who may be curious, a Code Red is the second most dire state of emergency a company can declare, with number one, of course, being a Baja Blast. Yeah. So Code Red is just below that.
Yes. Yes, if we get to Baja Blast, I'm ducking in coverage.
Yeah, me too. I'm leaving the city. I'm heading to the bunker.
So because this is a segment about AI, we should make our AI disclosures. I work for the New York Times, which is suing OpenAI and Microsoft over alleged copyright violations. And my boyfriend works at Anthropic. Okay, so let's start with OpenAI. Casey, what was in this code red memo?
Yeah, so this was reported by the information. Sam apparently sent employees a memo on Monday. And interestingly, Kevin, your colleague Cash Hill had reported recently that OpenAI had declared a code orange.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–8:18
2
Why did OpenAI declare a 'code red' and what changes did Sam Altman's memo require?
8:18–22:44
3
What competitive threat do Gemini 3 and Claude Opus 4.5 pose to OpenAI?
22:44–38:33
4
What specific fixes and feature priorities did OpenAI promise for ChatGPT?
38:33–1:00:53
Speakers
7 identifiedMore from Hard Fork
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