Lowri Griffiths on Silicon Valley’s latest London outpost, what it means for her neighbourhood’s coffee shop prices, and whether she should be worried or excited
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
OpenAI in London: My Neighbourhood’s Latest Import
OpenAI has opened a London office, which means that the company building the most powerful artificial intelligence systems in human history has decided that London is where it needs to be, which I want to take as a compliment to my city and which I am also taking as an early warning system for what is about to happen to the coffee shop on my corner.
I have seen this pattern before. A major American technology company opens a significant London office. The employees arrive. The employees have American technology company salaries. The coffee shops that the employees prefer become expensive. The restaurants nearby adjust their pricing. The estate agents on the high street update their window cards. I am not opposed to OpenAI being here. I am tracking the coffee prices with the attention appropriate to someone who has lived through several cycles of this.
The Question I Keep Returning To
The question I keep returning to is whether OpenAI’s London presence means the AI is going to affect my work in the specific way that people have been predicting it will affect journalism since approximately 2022, or whether journalism is going to be fine in the specific way that it has been fine while being obviously not entirely fine for at least a decade. I write things. AI writes things. The market for written things is currently processing this situation. OpenAI is now doing this processing from an office in London.
I went by the building they are reportedly in on Tuesday on my way to an interview. It looks like an office building. The coffee shop next door still charges the same as the one on my street. This may change. AI is making Britain stupider in some respects. In others it is providing useful tools that I use while worrying about them. Managing the arrival of major technology companies in one’s neighbourhood requires equanimity and an awareness of coffee prices. I am maintaining both. For now.
