The Old-Fashioned Library at the Heart of the A.I. Boom
OpenAI may be changing how the world interacts with language. But inside the company’s San Francisco office, there is a very old-fashioned homage to the written word: a library.
On one shelf is “American Prometheus,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.
There are multiple copies of “The Precipice,” a book about the existential risks facing humanity, along with science fiction classics like “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
There are also books about taking mind-altering drugs and empowering women. And what A.I. company’s office library would be complete without Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
The two-story library has Oriental rugs, shaded lamps dotting its desks and rows of hardbacks lining its walls. It is the architectural centerpiece of the offices of OpenAI, the start-up whose online chatbot, ChatGPT, showed the world that machines can instantly generate their own poetry and prose.
The building, which was once a mayonnaise factory, looks like a typical tech office, with its communal work spaces, well-stocked micro-kitchens and private nap rooms spread across three floors in San Francisco’s Mission District.
