If you walked out of the headquarters of Google in sunny Mountain View, California, and drove north for about an hour, you’d eventually hit San Francisco, step out of your car, and shiver. Here it was typically several degrees colder, with gray clouds hanging low in the sky. While Google’s hometown had T-shirt weather, you needed a jacket in OpenAl’s urban microclimate. Another big difference: the researchers at OpenAI were giddily excited about the transformer technology that Google’s management wanted to keep in a metaphorical cupboard. For the researchers based in chilly San Francisco, an idea was about to bloom.