Why Baratunde Thurston Fired ChatGPT—and What he Learned

Baratunde Thurston fired ChatGPT. And ChatGPT helped him do it. This week, the Emmy-nominated storyteller, writer and host of Life with Machines joins Jessi in the studio to talk about what it actually means to have agency in a moment when we’re still figuring out the rules and norms of AI.

In this episode, Jessi and Baratunde discuss:

• Why Baratunde fired ChatGPT and what the chat bot taught him on his way out

• What he means when he says we're not using a tool, we're entering a relationship

• The "direction, not perfection" principle for navigating an imperfect landscape of AI companies and choices

• Why switching platforms is itself a practice of agency, and proof that you can leave

• What AI tools reveal about you that you didn't know you were sharing

• The two people living inside every employee at an AI all-hands: the one on-program, and the one who's scared and skeptical

• What the kids opting out of AI are trying to tell us

• What the internet could look like if we treated it as a public utility instead of a commercial space

• Why token-maxing is a "flagrant foul" in an era of climate change

• What executives get wrong when rolling out AI, and the questions they should be asking their teams instead

Follow Baratunde Thurston (linkedin.com/in/baratunde) and Jessi Hempel (linkedin.com/in/jessihempel) on LinkedIn.