OpenAI's Will DePue on Why AI Chat Feels Flat: No Interruptions, No Edited Messages, and Models Aren't Funny
willdepue · x · 2026-09-22
OpenAI's Will DePue sparked a discussion with Nat Friedman about why AI experiences boomed then disappeared—AI Dungeon was massive, Character AI has faded—and why models "aren't funny," which he finds bizarre given how creatively weird GPT-3 chat was.
His critique of the chat format:
- Models can't interrupt users and users can't truly interrupt models, despite bidirectional voice models existing—there's no human-like realtime conversation;
- Why are there discrete 'chats' instead of one single stream? Why can't users edit model messages?
He argues the entire chat interaction paradigm needs rethinking, contending current product design boxes in what models can do.
Related event: OpenAI Staff Question Why Chat AI Lost Its Fun and Flexibility(2 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- OpenAI researchers imagine the counterfactual world where o1/RLVR was never discovered — willdepue · 2026-09-22
- The Stochastic Parrots debate reignites: scholars clash over whether the paper became dogma — birchlse · 2026-09-22
- AI and Amelia Bedelia: what children's books teach us about misalignment — davidmanheim · 2026-09-22
- Toby Ord on swarm scaling: 10,000-agent run cost ~$20M, solved Navier-Stokes in 88 hours — tobyordoxford · 2026-09-22
- Krueger: "indefinite" AI moratorium doesn't mean permanent — DavidSKrueger · 2026-09-22
- Toby Ord: Agent Swarm Estimates Put Intelligence Explosion Parameter λ at 0.5-0.6 — tobyordoxford · 2026-09-22