Eggers warned OpenAI staff that ChatGPT is robbing young writers of their voices

Author Dave Eggers used an invitation from OpenAI's Sam Altman to address roughly 200 staff members as a platform to voice serious concerns about the company's impact on education and creative development. Rather than discussing his prolific output across novels, screenplays, journalism, and nonprofit work supporting writers, Eggers took aim at ChatGPT's effect on learning and artistic growth.

The core criticism#

Eggers articulated a stark warning about the consequences of widespread AI adoption in classrooms. He emphasized that educators face dramatically transformed working conditions since ChatGPT's emergence, with teachers navigating unprecedented challenges in teaching writing fundamentals. His most pointed concern involved student composition work: when learners rely on AI tools to generate text, they forfeit the essential struggle of learning to write authentically. This absence of the writing process itself means students never develop their unique voices or gain the skills needed to articulate their own perspectives.

"The effect of ChatGPT on educators' lives is catastrophic," he stated, continuing that by enabling students to bypass the compositional process, the technology essentially steals their ability to discover and express their authentic selves—a condition he characterized as muting multiple generations before they've even begun.

A fitting messenger#

Altman's decision to invite Eggers—author of the bestselling novel The Circle, which examines tech industry overreach—suggests he anticipated pushback. Eggers has previously dismissed AI-generated writing as "pastiche nonsense," making his skepticism about generative systems well documented before this appearance.