North London asks if Silicon Valley knows what a pint costs

By Lowri Griffiths | Dispatches from North London, where the oat milk is free-range and the landlords are not.

Sources: Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat

OpenAI Has Arrived. Please Adjust Your Expectations Accordingly.

It was announced this week with great fanfare that OpenAI is opening a London office, which presumably means Islington estate agents are already updating their listings to read “AI-adjacent” instead of “next to a Pret.”

I live in Finsbury Park. I have watched our neighbourhood transform from a place where you could get a decent kebab at midnight to a place where you can get a “deconstructed kebab experience” at a pop-up for fourteen quid. Now apparently we are getting artificial intelligence too. Splendid. Perhaps the AI can explain my rent increase.

What Does This Actually Mean for North London?

According to the BBC Technology desk, the AI sector is expected to create thousands of UK jobs. What they do not explain is how many of those jobs will be filled by people who can afford to live within forty minutes of the office. Spoiler: not many.

My neighbour Dave, who drives a minicab and once fixed my boiler using only determination and a YouTube video, asked me what OpenAI actually does. I told him it makes chatbots. He said, and I quote, “So they’ve automated the call centre and they want a medal for it?” Dave is not wrong. Dave is, in fact, the most incisive technology analyst in N4.

The London Premium

Texas, bless its enormous heart, has also apparently launched a London office this week. I am not entirely sure what Texas exports to London besides cowboy boots and a certain confidence that is baffling in its intensity, but here we are. London is apparently now a branch office of everywhere.

What nobody seems to be asking is whether London wants all of this. We already have too many co-working spaces that smell of anxiety and cold brew. What we need is a functioning bus service past 11pm and a GP appointment before 2027.

A Personal Note

I tried using an AI chatbot last Tuesday to help me draft a complaint letter to my letting agency. It produced something so polite and reasonable that my letting agency actually responded. This is either a miracle or evidence that I have been communicating incorrectly for thirty-two years. Possibly both.

Welcome to London, OpenAI. Mind the gap. And the rats. Mostly the rats.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/openai-opens-london-office/

More laughs at NewsThump