The Verge56%

Dave Eggers told OpenAI staff that ChatGPT was ‘silencing an entire generation’ 89%

By Terrence O'Brien58%

7/18/2026, 8:54:42 PM

BS Summary: This article contains 23 faulty reasoning types, including Pessimism Bias, Hasty Generalization, and Negativity Bias, with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 45.8% saturation with 97 hits. Analysis detected 745 faulty-reasoning hits from 212 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 81.4% and a BS Rank of 89% (2,553 of 21,886 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 88.30% of the article peer group.

Last year, Sam Altman invited author Dave Eggers to give a talk to around 200 OpenAI staffers. 
The man has written countless novels, screenplays, pieces of journalism, started McSweeney’s, and founded multiple schools and nonprofits that support writers and the arts more broadly. 
So one might expect he’d roll into the company’s offices and offer tips on being relentlessly prolific, or how to excel in multiple fields. 
Instead, he apparently laced into the company. 
According to the Financial Times, Eggers told the staff: 
“The effect of ChatGPT on educators’ lives is catastrophic. 
Whether you intended to do it or not, you’ve made every teacher’s life infinitely more difficult than it was two years ago. 
So, just let that settle in… If students are using it to compose, which is the biggest tragedy of all, they’ll never learn to write. 
And their voice is stolen from them. 
They’ll never have the ability to say their truth and tell their own story. 
And that’s silencing an entire generation or two.” 
To be fair, Altman likely knew what he was getting himself into. 
Eggers’ best-selling novel The Circle is a scathing critique of the tech industry. 
And he’s called AI-generated writing “pastiche nonsense.” 
Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 10.4%Terrence O'Brien: 4.3%The Verge: 3.6%Confirmation Bias10.4%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.1%The Verge: 1.3%Anchoring Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 3.8%The Verge: 3.8%Availability Heuristic0.0%This article: 17.5%Terrence O'Brien: 0.8%The Verge: 1.3%Representativeness Heuristic17.5%This article: 5.7%Terrence O'Brien: 1.1%The Verge: 0.7%Hindsight Bias5.7%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.8%The Verge: 1.7%Overconfidence Bias0.0%This article: 11.3%Terrence O'Brien: 8.9%The Verge: 6.2%Framing Effect11.3%This article: 13.7%Terrence O'Brien: 0.6%The Verge: 0.9%Loss Aversion13.7%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.3%The Verge: 0.5%Status Quo Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.3%The Verge: 0.4%Sunk Cost Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 2.1%The Verge: 4.0%Optimism Bias0.0%This article: 33.0%Terrence O'Brien: 1.8%The Verge: 2.4%Pessimism Bias33.0%This article: 29.7%Terrence O'Brien: 12.1%The Verge: 9.7%Negativity Bias29.7%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 1.0%The Verge: 1.5%Self-Serving Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.4%The Verge: 0.8%Fundamental Attribution Error0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.3%The Verge: 0.2%Actor-Observer Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.7%The Verge: 0.6%In-Group Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 1.5%The Verge: 0.4%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias0.0%This article: 12.3%Terrence O'Brien: 2.9%The Verge: 2.8%Halo Effect12.3%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.6%The Verge: 0.2%Horn Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.0%The Verge: 0.0%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 1.3%The Verge: 1.8%Recency Bias0.0%This article: 6.1%Terrence O'Brien: 0.9%The Verge: 0.4%Primacy Effect6.1%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.0%The Verge: 0.1%Blind-Spot Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 3.4%The Verge: 1.1%Ad Hominem0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 1.0%The Verge: 0.3%Straw Man0.0%This article: 16.5%Terrence O'Brien: 6.1%The Verge: 4.0%Appeal to Authority16.5%This article: 22.2%Terrence O'Brien: 1.1%The Verge: 1.6%False Dilemma22.2%This article: 11.8%Terrence O'Brien: 1.6%The Verge: 1.2%Slippery Slope11.8%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.4%The Verge: 0.2%Circular Reasoning0.0%This article: 32.5%Terrence O'Brien: 5.9%The Verge: 6.8%Hasty Generalization32.5%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.4%The Verge: 0.2%Red Herring0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 1.3%The Verge: 0.7%Bandwagon0.0%This article: 45.8%Terrence O'Brien: 6.6%The Verge: 4.2%Appeal to Emotion45.8%This article: 11.8%Terrence O'Brien: 1.5%The Verge: 1.1%Begging the Question11.8%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 3.5%The Verge: 2.3%Post Hoc (False Cause)0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.3%The Verge: 0.2%Tu Quoque0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.5%The Verge: 0.8%Burden of Proof0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.0%The Verge: 0.3%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 6.1%Terrence O'Brien: 0.2%The Verge: 0.3%Composition/Division6.1%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 2.7%The Verge: 3.6%Anecdotal0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.1%The Verge: 0.1%No True Scotsman0.0%This article: 9.9%Terrence O'Brien: 2.6%The Verge: 2.2%Ambiguity (Equivocation)9.9%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.0%The Verge: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 11.3%Terrence O'Brien: 0.1%The Verge: 0.1%Middle Ground11.3%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.2%The Verge: 0.1%Personal Incredulity0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.0%The Verge: 0.2%Special Pleading0.0%This article: 6.1%Terrence O'Brien: 0.2%The Verge: 0.2%Genetic Fallacy6.1%This article: 5.7%Terrence O'Brien: 3.2%The Verge: 2.6%Unattributed Quote5.7%This article: 15.6%Terrence O'Brien: 2.9%The Verge: 1.4%Quote-first Misdirection15.6%This article: 12.3%Terrence O'Brien: 11.4%The Verge: 10.8%Biased Writer Voice12.3%This article: 4.2%Terrence O'Brien: 2.0%The Verge: 1.1%Indoctrination4.2%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 3.5%The Verge: 1.6%Politically Left Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 0.1%The Verge: 0.1%Politically Right Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Terrence O'Brien: 3.7%The Verge: 4.2%Attempt to Sell a Product or S…0.0%

212 words analyzed.

Speakers

2speakers53%attributed speech99writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Dave Eggers • 12 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 17 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 26 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 24 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 7 words • 0.0% coverageFinancial Times • 9 words • 100.0% coverageDave Eggers • 9 words • 100.0% coverageDave Eggers • 22 words • 0.0% coverageDave Eggers • 25 words • 0.0% coverageDave Eggers • 7 words • 0.0% coverageDave Eggers • 14 words • 0.0% coverageDave Eggers • 8 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 12 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 13 words • 0.0% coverageDave Eggers • 7 words • 0.0% coverage
Selected voice

Dave Eggers

100%flagged-word coverage
104 attributed words92% of attributed speech83% writer coverage
0%15.0%30.0%Biased Writer Voice-26.3 ptsWriter: 26.3%Dave Eggers: 0.0%0.0%Quote-first Misdirection-15.6 ptsWriter: 24.2%Dave Eggers: 8.7%8.7%Unattributed Quote+11.5 ptsWriter: 0.0%Dave Eggers: 11.5%11.5%

Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.

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Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.