CEO Nicholas Thompson discusses the deal: ‘AI is coming. It is coming quickly. We want to be part of whatever transition happens.’
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Illustration: The Verge Today, I’m talking to Nicholas Thompson, the CEO of The Atlantic , one of the oldest magazines in the United States — like really old. It was founded in 1857 and is now owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, whose last name I am certain that Decoder listeners will recognize.
I was really excited to talk to Nick — like so many media CEOs, he just signed a deal allowing OpenAI to use The Atlantic ’s vast archives as training data, but he also has a rich background in tech. Before he was the CEO of The Atlantic , Nick was the editor-in-chief of Wired , where he set his sights on AI reporting well before anyone else, including me. So he’s been paying attention to this for a long time.
Now, I feel like I should disclose right away that Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company where I work, also has a deal with OpenAI, which was announced on the same day as The Atlantic’s deal. Listen to Decoder , a show hosted by The Verge ’s Nilay Patel about big ideas — and other problems. Subscribe here !
I actually don’t know very much about the terms of our deal, since I’m on the editorial side of the house and there’s a strict firewall between the business side and the editorial side. I suspect all of these deals are pretty similar, but I actually asked Nick about that. And there’s a pretty funny reason that he doesn’t know either; you’ll hear us talk about it.
Of course, I also asked Nick why he was willing to sign a deal with OpenAI in the first place, and why now when there’s so much general unhappiness about AI companies using other people’s work without permission, and specific unhappiness with OpenAI. You’ll hear Nick explain that what he really wanted to get back was a sense of control: Control over how much data was being used, how […]
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