Don't panic! What Sam Altman’s OTT declaration of a 'code red' for OpenAI tells us about the race he thinks he's running

According to a leaked memo published by The Wall Street Journal, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI has declared a 'code red' in a message sent to employees, exhorting them to improve ChatGPT’s quality and delay other product work, declaring that:

We know we have some work to do, but we are catching up fast.

And:

We are at a critical time for ChatGPT.

It cannot be a co-incidence that this hitting of the metaphorical panic button follows a stunning improvement in Google’s latest Gemini model, one that other tech leaders have been enthused by. For example, Salesforce CEO Marc Benoff declared on the social-media-platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter:

Holy sh*t. I've used ChatGPT every day for three years. Just spent two hours on Gemini 3. I'm not going back...It feels like the world just changed again.❤️ 🤖

So, OK, maybe there's room for a little nervousness here on ...