Dave Eggers tells OpenAI staff that ChatGPT is 'silencing an entire generation'

Author Dave Eggers gave a talk to roughly 200 OpenAI staffers last year at an invitation from CEO Sam Altman, according to The Verge. Eggers, whose work spans novels, screenplays and journalism, and who founded McSweeney’s along with several schools and nonprofits supporting writers and the arts, used the appearance to warn the audience directly rather than offer encouragement.

Per the outlet’s report, Eggers told the OpenAI staffers that ChatGPT was “silencing an entire generation,” a characterization he delivered inside the company’s own offices to the people building the product. The Verge frames the moment as notable given the setting, an invited outside voice from the literary and nonprofit world addressing the workforce of one of the industry’s largest AI companies on the potential costs of the technology to human expression.

The report does not detail the full substance of Eggers’s remarks beyond this characterization, nor does it describe how Altman or OpenAI staff responded in the room. The Verge’s account situates the talk as part of a broader pattern of writers and cultural figures raising concerns about generative AI’s effect on writing and creative development, concerns that intersect with ongoing industry debate over what AI chat tools are doing to those who rely on them, particularly younger users still developing as writers.