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WSJ What’s News

What Drove OpenAI’s ‘Code Red’ for ChatGPT

09 Dec 2025

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 10.066 Jason Garzadas

As companies seek to close growing gaps in skills and talent, Deloitte U.S. CEO Jason Garzadas believes it's important for organizations to understand their baseline of skills.

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10.507 - 20.742 Unknown

There's so many organizations that can't ask and answer the fundamental questions about how much computer science or data management skills do I have or AI development skills in a given domain.

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20.982 - 25.809 Jason Garzadas

By performing a skills inventory, leaders can truly understand where their efforts should be focused.

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25.829 - 28.333 Unknown

Being blind to those gaps is the real miss.

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28.313 - 32.856 Jason Garzadas

Visit Deloitte.com to learn how your enterprise can help successfully cultivate talent.

35.553 - 48.725 Alex Osola

What investors expect ahead of the Federal Reserve's decision on interest rates tomorrow. Plus, why OpenAI declared a code red to focus on chat GPT and what that means for its future.

49.065 - 57.312 Sam Schechner

It feels like just the conversation around AI chatbots has suddenly said, hey, Google, and that's been a real challenge for the company.

57.733 - 84.857 Alex Osola

And President Trump says Ukraine is losing and that the country should accept a U.S. peace plan. It's Tuesday, December 9th. I'm Alex Oselev for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. Today, Federal Reserve officials gathered for their final two-day rate-setting meeting of the year.

85.358 - 103.72 Alex Osola

They won't announce their decision until tomorrow, but they're expected to cut rates by a quarter point, though as many as half the policymakers have signaled that they oppose a cut. Officials have been unusually divided over whether a weaker jobs market or worsening inflation would be harder to fix if the Fed makes the wrong choice now.

Chapter 2: What prompted OpenAI to declare a 'code red' for ChatGPT?

242.786 - 264.298 Sam Schechner

The most direct cause of this code red has been the immediate threat from Google. Last month, the release of Gemini 3, its new model, blew past OpenAI on a closely watched third-party leaderboard of AI tools. It It feels like just the conversation around AI chatbots has suddenly said, hey, Google.

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264.799 - 282.167 Sam Schechner

And that's been a real challenge for the company, leading Sam Altman to put out a company-wide memo saying, OK, we need to pour resources back into ChatGPT, our core consumer product. And he's summoning people from other teams to work on improving that product.

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282.552 - 291.415 Alex Osola

How has ChatGPT been doing, not only in terms of its lead in the AI race, but also its relationship with users?

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291.597 - 312.661 Sam Schechner

It is a runaway consumer success. More than 800 million people every week are using ChatGPT. And it's a lot of what's driven the valuation of the company. Behind some of that success is the fact that ChatGPT has built a sometimes emotional relationship with users. People tend to love it.

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312.741 - 338.007 Sam Schechner

And there's actually one model in particular that kind of epitomizes that, which was the default model until earlier this year. It's called ChatGPT 4.0. One of the really unique and special things about 4.0 is that it was trained using something called user feedback signals. You know, millions of choices by consumers of which kind of response they preferred.

337.987 - 354.699 Sam Schechner

But those signals that made people love the chatbot, did they cause any problems?

354.779 - 357.244 Alex Osola

And what does that mean for OpenAI now?

357.393 - 386.122 Sam Schechner

Those same signals also is thought to have created a problem called sycophancy, which is in AI speak, basically a model that goes way too far in telling you what you want to hear. Sam Altman in his memo says, we're going to pour resources back into improving chat GPT. And what does he point to as the number one way to do that? Well, better use of user signals.

386.523 - 410.662 Sam Schechner

OpenAI says that it has done a lot of work to make sure that its models better respond to people in distress. And so the question here will be, how will OpenAI navigate that? The delicate balance between giving people what they want, trying to make their product more popular in a tough commercial race, versus giving people maybe what's healthiest in the moment.

Chapter 3: What is the significance of the Federal Reserve's interest rate decisions?

459.646 - 487.119 Alex Osola

The export approvals haven't been finalized and the details could change. Coming up, why we might not be getting the full picture of how much Americans borrow and why that matters. That's after the break. President Trump is pushing Ukraine to accept a U.S. peace plan.

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487.799 - 510.03 Alex Osola

In an interview late yesterday with Politico, Trump said Russia holds the cards in any peace negotiation and that Ukraine is, quote, losing. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said today that he expects a 20-point plan worked on by European and Ukrainian officials will be shared with the U.S. tomorrow. He also expects meetings with Trump's national security team this week.

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510.01 - 529.9 Alex Osola

The White House didn't immediately reply to a request for comment on the discussions. And Honduras' attorney general has asked global police organization Interpol to arrest the country's former president on corruption charges. The former president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, was released from a U.S. prison last week after a pardon from President Trump.

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530.481 - 548.353 Alex Osola

Hernandez was serving a 45-year sentence for a drug trafficking conviction. It's a question that has been on a lot of people's minds. How are U.S. consumers doing these days? There are the usual places to look, like credit card spending and debt levels.

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548.794 - 567.895 Alex Osola

But increasingly, that's only showing part of the picture, because a growing amount of consumer lending is shifting to less visible parts of the financial system, like private credit. For more on the rise of private credit and what it means for our picture of the U.S. economy, I'm joined now by Telus Demos, writer for Heard on the Street and co-host of the WSJ's Take on the Week podcast.

568.557 - 572.788 Alex Osola

Telus, what kinds of loans are included in this umbrella of private credit?

573.342 - 595.982 Telis Demos

What we're seeing are a lot of firms that are not banks. You might call them like financial technology or fintech companies funding the lending they do through the private credit markets. A lot of these companies do lending like buy now, pay later lending. They do other kinds of consumer loans. Usually they're smaller and shorter term loans.

596.303 - 613.71 Telis Demos

There are people who might not have access to the normal types of credit, like say a credit card, but are actually a good bet from a lender's point of view. Private credit can help them reach that because private credit can do sort of what it wants, right? They don't have to follow as many rules. That is the type of thing that might appeal to investors like you.

613.69 - 629.016 Telis Demos

insurance companies or certain kinds of asset managers, this like insular sort of private market only for qualified individuals and institutions who might be willing to lend you a relatively small amount of money for a short period of time and to do that like over and over again.

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