David Eggers—famous author of many best selling books (e.g., Contraposto, The Circle, The Eyes and the Impossible)—recently spoke at the OpenAI Headquarters. It seemed an excellent opportunity for him to give them some advice on AI use by writers.
He told the staff that the “effect of ChatGPT on educators’ lives is catastrophic,” adding 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.”
.
Eggers called out OpenAI staffers for enabling the rapid cognitive deterioration of an entire generation, tech that has turned educators into involuntary AI detectives, and budding writers into prompt engineers.
His advice to an employee who mentioned that they used ChatGPT to write a poem: “So, why don’t you leave your house, leave the screen, meet some people, get yourself in a writing group. Another human might be very encouraging and help you express yourself authentically.”
.
References:
Tangermann, Victor. 2026. “Author Invited to Give Speech at OpenAI Headquarters, Uses Opportunity to Trash AI to Their Faces”. Futurism, July 21, 2026.
.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For the lates on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020. You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
.
Nina Munteanu Writing Coach 