The past ten days have been among the most consequential in OpenAI’s history, with developments stacking up across product, politics, personnel, and the courts. Here is what happened — and what it means.OpenAI on Tuesday launched a set of interactive visual tools inside ChatGPT that let users manipulate mathematical and scientific formulas in real time — a genuinely impressive education feature that landed in the middle of the most turbulent stretch of the company’s corporate life.The new experience covers more than 70 core math and science concepts, from the Pythagorean theorem to Ohm’s law to compound interest. When a user asks ChatGPT to explain one of these topics, the chatbot now generates a dynamic module with adjustable sliders alongside its written response. Drag a variable, and the equations, graphs, and diagrams update instantly. The feature is available today to all logged-in users worldwide, across every plan, including free.OpenAI tells VentureBeat that 140 million people already use ChatGPT each week for math and science learning. That is a staggering number. It also means the feature arrives with unusually high stakes: since late February, OpenAI has been sued by the family of a 12-year-old mass shooting victim who alleges the company knew the attacker was planning violence through ChatGPT; lost its head of robotics over a Pentagon deal that triggered a near-300% spike in app uninstalls; watched more than 30 of its own employees file a legal brief supporting rival Anthropic against the U.S. government; and scrapped plans with Oracle to expand a flagship data center in Texas. Its chief competitor’s app, Claude, now sits atop the App Store.The interactive learning tools are, on their merits, a strong product. They also arrive at a company fighting on every front simultaneously — and burning through an estimated $15 billion in cash this year to do it.How the new ChatGPT learning tools actually workThe feature is built on a simple pedagogical premise: students understand formulas better when they can see what happens as the inputs change.Ask ChatGPT “help me understand the Pythagorean theorem,” and the system now …
