When Altman announced the activation of the highest-level "red alert", OpenAI was facing unprecedented competitive pressure. The strong pursuit of competitors such as Google has forced OpenAI to re-examine its own rhythm. At this time, Nick Turley, the 30-year-old head of ChatGPT, walked to the stage. As the main executor of this round of "red alert" operations, he will directly determine the direction of OpenAI in the next few years.
Turley responded to "Red Alert" and said that its first priority is to enhance the personalization of ChatGPT, achieve cross-application connections, and improve search capabilities, so that ChatGPT understands user preferences and can perform corresponding tasks for users within applications such as email and enterprise collaboration platform Slack.
In 2022, when Turley switched from instant retail company Instacart to OpenAI, ChatGPT had not yet been launched. He has been deeply involved in ChatGPT’s interface design, user experience and internal team coordination, and has almost become ChatGPT’s most important product promoter.
Around Thanksgiving that year, OpenAI launched a demo version of ChatGPT, which accidentally detonated the world and caused Google to sound a "red alert." "Without Teli, there would be no ChatGPT." OpenAI research director Joan Zhang commented.
Turley's promotion is also accompanied by continued personnel turmoil in the OpenAI product team. As previous leaders left or were transferred, Turley continued to take on more core responsibilities. Today, he has become the actual person in charge of ChatGPT and related application systems, reporting directly to the head of OpenAI application business and former Instacart CEO Feige Simo.
Peter Deng, general partner of Felicis Ventures, even called him "Silicon Valley's next top product executive" and called him the least-known key figure in OpenAI.
Recently, there has been obvious anxiety within OpenAI. Altman believes that Google's catch-up may bring "temporary economic headwinds" to OpenAI. So he ordered: suspend some projects and focus all resources on improving ChatGPT. Against this background, ChatGPT must accelerate iteration, and this arduous task ultimately fell on the shoulders of Turley's team.
OpenAI has set an ambitious goal for ChatGPT: in the next five years, 8.5% of global weekly active users will be converted into paid subscribers - about 220 million people. To do this, ChatGPT must be more deeply embedded in users’ lives than just a chat window that opens occasionally.
And Teli is committed to making ChatGPT a true "super assistant" and making ChatGPT a digital interface for users' lives. In his court testimony, he even described: "When a user says he wants to buy a pair of shoes, in the future ChatGPT will be able to automatically find the product, give alternatives, and even complete the transaction directly."
Turley once compared the current ChatGPT to MS-DOS - powerful but still in its primitive stage. He believes that future AI assistants will lead a new intelligent interaction revolution like Windows.
“We haven’t built a ‘Windows system’ yet,” he said in the podcast. “When we do, everyone will understand.”
Another key task for Turley is to develop OpenAI’s advertising business. With its in-depth understanding of users, ChatGPT can theoretically provide more accurate product recommendations than search engines. This may give OpenAI the commercial ability to compete with Google in the future. Although Altman announced in the "Red Alert" memo that advertising plans will be suspended in order to focus on improving core products, insiders revealed that related research and development is still continuing.