OpenAI's waiting game, gas pump pain, and severe sulfur strain!

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

N-P-R.

Wailin Wong (0:06)

This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Wayland Wong.

Cooper Katz McKim (0:09)

I'm Cooper Katz McKim.

Ricky Mulvey (0:11)

And I'm Ricky Mulvey.

Wailin Wong (0:12)

You guys, it's already been a roller coaster of a week. The Fed hiked interest rates by 25 basis points on Wednesday. And if that's how Hump Day was handled, one can only assume that this will be quite an eventful.

Indicators of the Week. That's right. On today's show, we have a real time tracker for gas costs that might make you cry.

Ricky Mulvey (0:36)

OpenAI doesn't want to go public for safety, allegedly.

Cooper Katz McKim (0:41)

And fertilizer has a sulfur problem. It's getting a little pricey.

Wailin Wong (0:45)

That's all after the break.

Ricky Mulvey (0:52)

This is Indicators of the Week. Wayland Wong, you are up first.

Wailin Wong (0:56)

All right. My indicator is $108 billion.

That is how much American consumers have paid in additional fuel costs since the Iran War started in late February. This number covers both gas and diesel, and it works out to around $820 per US household. These figures come from the Climate Solutions Lab at Brown University. It's tracking these numbers live. So if you want to feel anxious, you can go to the website and watch these big red numbers tick up in real time.

Ricky Mulvey (1:25)

Oh, that sounds stressful. It's perfect. You said additional fuel costs. So what does that mean?

Wailin Wong (1:30)

Right. So the number crunches at Brown are comparing current fuel costs to a counterfactual, basically an alternate reality where the Iran War never happened. Of course, there's no way to know exactly what gas prices would be doing in this other timeline.

Cooper Katz McKim (1:45)

Unless, obviously, if you're a time traveler.

Wailin Wong (1:47)

Obviously, if you're Marty McFly from Back to the Future, you've got the Sports Almanac, you know where gas prices are, but not in this case.

Cooper Katz McKim (1:54)

Okay, so how did they come up with these numbers?

Wailin Wong (1:56)

The Brown data uses a 30-day average price from before the war and then adjusts it for seasonal factors. You know, these are variations in how much gas people use depending on the time of year. People going on road trips in the summer, for example, leads to higher demand in warmer months.

Ricky Mulvey (2:11)

Yeah, but not necessarily fighting a war or, excuse me, a military conflict.

Wailin Wong (2:16)

That is another thing that can happen in warmer months, I guess.

Either way, that's their best calculation of where gas and diesel prices would be if there were no war with Iran. And you might have seen in the news this week that diesel prices are now at a record level. They're over $6 a gallon.

Ricky Mulvey (2:34)

And diesel factors into the costs for consumers, even though most of us aren't filling up our tanks with it.

Wailin Wong (2:40)

Yeah, that's exactly what the tracker said. It said higher diesel cost means higher prices for consumers, whether or not they pay it directly at the pump. And that's because trucks and trains and factories and farmers use diesel. And when they pay more, those increased costs can flow through to what we pay for groceries or Amazon purchases or what have you.

Cooper Katz McKim (2:59)

All right, Wayland. Thank you. Ricky, what do you got for us?

Ricky Mulvey (3:03)

Okay, my indicator is $1.2 trillion.

This is the latest funding round that OpenAI is considering with private investors. That's according to the Financial Times. And this comes at a time when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Fortune he's not ready to take the company public.

SPEAKER_1 (3:21)

I actually think that given everything happening with safety, this would be right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public.

Ricky Mulvey (3:29)

It's safety. That's why we can't take our company public.

Wailin Wong (3:32)

It's safety. But then like why are they still building their product if it's so unsafe?

Ricky Mulvey (3:37)

Yeah, there's a lot of weirdness here. Like earlier this year, the tech media outlet The Information reported that Altman and the company's Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar, they were at odds about when to take the company public. Altman wanted to go public faster. Friar was reportedly concerned about the company's spending. There's a lot of drama here.

Wailin Wong (3:56)

Maybe they should go talk to their chatbot therapist about it.

Ricky Mulvey (3:58)

Yeah, and they have some relationship problems. Like Friar doesn't report to Altman, which is an unusual relationship between a Chief Executive Officer and a Chief Financial Officer. Altman has also allegedly left Friar out of some meetings with big money investors, which is also unusual.