ChatGPT has certainly captured the world's imagination since its release at the end of 2022. But in day-to-day life, it is still a relatively niche product--a curiosity that leads people to ask questions that begin "Have you tried …?" or "What do you think about …?" Its maker, OpenAI, has a much more expansive vision. Its aim is seemingly to completely remake how people use the internet. For that to happen, the bot needs to be more than a conversation starter: It has to be a functioning business.

The proposed purchase of Zynga is some $4.1 billion more than Chinese conglomerate Tencent paid for an 81.4 percent majority in Finland's Supercell -- another mobile game maker that developed the Clash of Clans franchise -- in 2016. That deal of $9.274 billion served as the previous high mark for acquiring video game company. In 2020, Microsoft acquired ZeniMax Media, which includes highly-regarded game maker Bethesda Softworks, for $8.1 billion. In 2015, Activision Blizzard paid $5.9 billion to acquire King, the mobile game maker behind "Candy Crush."

Years ago, while on vacation in the Northwest, my husband and I rented a room in the home of a middle-aged couple, one of whom had recently retired. The house was old, beautiful, and cozily laden with objects that signalled domestic inertia. It sat on a lush, wild sprawl of farmland that immediately inspired fantasies of leaving San Francisco and our tech jobs, foraging for mushrooms, administering to septic systems, and turning over soil. One morning over breakfast, conversation shifted to our host's retirement. He was glad to have more time at home with his wife and their dog.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. It sounds like the stuff of spy novels. A secretive company backed by an eccentric billionaire taps into sensitive data gathered by a University of Cambridge researcher. The company then works to help elect an ultranationalist presidential candidate who admires Russian President Vladimir Putin. Oh, and that Cambridge researcher, Aleksandr Kogan, worked briefly for St. Petersburg State University.

In video game development, why are video game ideas worth nothing? I've worked at EA along with 10,000 other people. The average experience level was probably around eight years. I worked at Ubisoft, also along with 10,000 other people. My particular game studio was more around fourteen years of experience.