"Here's a truth from physics that should concern every executive racing toward AI dominance: speed tells you how fast you're moving. Velocity tells you how fast you're moving - and in which direction. A car travelling at 100 mph in circles has tremendous speed but zero velocity. It goes nowhere. It only burns fuel, overheats the engine, and eventually becomes a hazard to everything nearby."
"Sam Altman reportedly issued an internal "code red" at OpenAI in December 2025 - an emergency directive to focus resources on improving ChatGPT whilst delaying initiatives like advertising or Pulse triggered by Google's launch of Gemini 3. The flagship product that triggered the current AI frenzy, deployed to hundreds of millions of users, needed an internal alarm bell. Not because it had fundamentally failed. But because in the race to stay ahead, the product itself required urgent consolidation before it could bear the weight of continued competition."
Speed without direction creates the illusion of progress while producing little meaningful outcome. Velocity requires both rate and direction, so rapid motion without steering wastes resources and creates hazards. Emergency directives to consolidate flagship products can be necessary when rapid expansion outpaces stability. An AI race driven by release dates, funding, model sizes, and benchmark wins rewards acceleration rather than strategic intent. Measuring leadership by short-term milestones encourages shipping because capability exists rather than because of a clear strategic goal, which enables cascading failures and strategic drift.
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