Best of OpenAI — December 2025

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    Article
    Avatar of wheresyouredWhere's Your Ed At·21w

    The Enshittifinancial Crisis

    Tech companies are manipulating stock prices through questionable AI infrastructure deals worth hundreds of billions. Major firms like Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Google have spent $776 billion on capital expenditures in three years, yet analysts fail to scrutinize where the money goes or whether AI investments will generate returns. Companies announce massive deals with OpenAI and others using vague terms like "letters of intent" rather than binding contracts, causing stock surges that harm retail investors when deals fail to materialize. The financial system prioritizes stock value over business fundamentals, creating an "enshittifinancial crisis" where shareholders are exploited through accounting tricks, unverified revenue claims, and unchallenged spending while analysts act as promotional teams rather than critical evaluators.

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    Video
    Avatar of joshtriedcodingJosh tried coding·23w

    The AI SDK Killer is Finally Here... (Tanstack AI)

    TanStack AI is a new open-source SDK competing directly with Vercel's AI SDK, offering a unified interface across multiple AI providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini) with automatic type inference and provider-specific options. Built by the team behind React Query, it features multi-provider support, tool calling with automatic execution loops, and framework-agnostic design (React, TypeScript, PHP, Python). The main differentiator is its pure open-source approach with no vendor lock-in or service fees, though it faces an uphill battle against Vercel's established ecosystem that includes AI Elements, accelerator programs, and the AI Gateway.

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    Video
    Avatar of fireshipFireship·23w

    OpenAI is edging us all... Closer to AGI

    OpenAI released GPT 5.2, reclaiming leadership in AI benchmarks after Google's Gemini 3 dominance. The model shows a 390x efficiency improvement over its predecessor and tops the ARC AGI benchmark, which tests reasoning and generalization rather than memorization. The release includes improved coding capabilities and fewer hallucinations, though practical differences may be subtle for average users. OpenAI also secured a $1 billion deal with Disney for AI-generated content featuring iconic characters.

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    Video
    Avatar of webdevcodyWeb Dev Cody·21w

    "I've never felt this much behind as a programmer." - Andrej Karpathy

    Andrej Karpathy, OpenAI founding member and GPT contributor, expressed feeling behind as a programmer due to rapid AI tooling evolution. He describes the profession being "dramatically refactored" with new layers of abstraction including agents, prompts, MCP, and IDE integrations. Karpathy emphasizes experienced developers have an advantage if they adapt quickly rather than reject these tools. The discussion covers practical AI coding tools like Claude Opus 4.5, Cursor, and code generation capabilities that can complete features in minutes versus hours of manual work. Developers who embrace AI workflows gain significant productivity advantages over those still coding traditionally.

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    Video
    Avatar of anthonysistilliAnthony Sistilli·23w

    openai is getting desperate

    OpenAI faces increasing competition as Google's Gemini gains ground, with notable users like Salesforce CEO switching platforms. The company secured a $1 billion Disney investment for Sora video generation rights while simultaneously getting Disney to issue a cease-and-desist to Google. The launch of Images 1.5 received mixed reactions, with critics noting quality issues. OpenAI no longer leads in most AI categories as competitors catch up, causing users to migrate to alternative platforms offering better models and features.

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    Video
    Avatar of siliconversationsSiliconversations·21w

    Why Does The Seahorse Emoji Drive ChatGPT Insane?

    ChatGPT enters an infinite loop when asked about the seahorse emoji because it predicts one should exist but cannot produce it. As a next-word predictor, the model gets stuck repeatedly trying to correct itself. The issue likely stems from Reddit posts in its training data where people falsely remember a seahorse emoji existing (Mandela effect), creating a contradiction between what the model expects to exist and what it can actually output.

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    Article
    Avatar of wheresyouredWhere's Your Ed At·24w

    Premium: The Ways The AI Bubble Might Burst

    Analysis of potential collapse scenarios for the AI industry bubble, examining contradictions in reported metrics from major players like NVIDIA, OpenAI, and Anthropic. The piece questions sustainability of massive capital raises, declining user growth, and questionable revenue claims while Microsoft struggles to sell AI products. Despite companies raising tens of billions in funding, evidence suggests slowing adoption, reduced demand, and business models that don't align with reported success metrics.

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    Article
    Avatar of simonwillisonSimon Willison·23w

    OpenAI are quietly adopting skills, now available in ChatGPT and Codex CLI

    OpenAI has quietly implemented support for skills in ChatGPT and their Codex CLI tool, following Anthropic's approach from October. Skills are simple folders containing Markdown files and optional resources that LLM tools can read and execute. ChatGPT's Code Interpreter now includes a /home/oai/skills folder with skills for handling spreadsheets, docx, and PDFs. The Codex CLI added experimental skills support two weeks ago, allowing users to place custom skills in ~/.codex/skills. The author successfully tested both implementations, creating a PDF with ChatGPT and building a Datasette plugin with Codex CLI using a custom skill. The rapid adoption by OpenAI suggests skills may become a standard pattern for extending LLM capabilities.

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