Author Dave Eggers was invited to OpenAI’s headquarters in the Bay Area after he criticized CEO Sam Altman for praising an AI-generated short story in March 2025, which Eggers called “pastiche nonsense.” Speaking to roughly 200 attendees, Eggers told staff that the “effect of ChatGPT on educators' lives is catastrophic” and that “whether you intended to do it or not, you've made every teacher's life infinitely more difficult than it was two years ago.” He added that if students use AI to compose, “they'll never learn to write” and “their voice is stolen from them,” calling it “silencing an entire generation or two.” When an employee said they had used ChatGPT to write a poem, Eggers advised them to “touch grass” and “leave your house, leave the screen, meet some people, get yourself in a writing group.” Eggers concluded, “It ended up being a very poignant hour.”