Good Tech Index
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ChatGPT (OpenAI)

The GTI Label — this product's ethical and social footprint.

AI
Weighting: Balanced Climate first Labour first
E 14.5
14.5 / 100 medium

Weighted under the Balanced profile. 2 declared components across 2 layers.

The product itself

How this product scores on its own merits — its licence, ownership and openness — separate from the stack it's built on.

Own score medium 15.0

Flags

  • Microsoft Azure concentration

    Hyperscaler chokepoint — one of three clouds hosting much of the web.

  • OpenAI API labour

    Reported concerns over low-paid data-labelling and RLHF annotation work.

By layer

Hosting & network medium 15.6

Microsoft Azure

Services medium 12.5

OpenAI API

By axis

The score is the vector — each axis is scored on its own, then weighted into the number above. Open an axis to see the reasoning behind it.

Data sovereignty & surveillance medium 0.0
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Where data lives and the surveillance capacity it grants. 5 = fully sovereign.

The product itself medium 1 / 5

Prompts are processed on a US hyperscaler.

Microsoft Azure medium 1 / 5
OpenAI API medium 1 / 5
Environmental footprint medium 33.3
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Energy source, hardware lifecycle, water/cooling. Follows provenance.

The product itself medium 2 / 5

Large training and inference energy footprint.

Microsoft Azure medium 3 / 5
OpenAI API medium 2 / 5
Local economic benefit medium 0.0
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Does the spend stay in-region (5) or leave (1)?

Microsoft Azure medium 1 / 5
OpenAI API medium 1 / 5
Market concentration medium 0.0
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Does using this reinforce a chokepoint or monopoly? 5 = no lock-in / many alternatives.

Microsoft Azure medium 1 / 5
OpenAI API medium 1 / 5
Openness & lock-in medium 25.0
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Can you leave, and can others reach it? 5 = open access with no account required and easy data export; 1 = a walled garden — account-gated, proprietary, hard to export.

The product itself medium 2 / 5

API- and account-gated; no export of how your data is used.

Microsoft Azure medium 2 / 5
OpenAI API medium 2 / 5
Ownership model medium 16.7
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Who benefits from ownership? Shareholder / private-equity extraction (1) vs worker-owned / nonprofit / state or public-good (5).

The product itself medium 2 / 5

Capped-profit company, heavily Microsoft-backed.

Microsoft Azure medium 1 / 5
OpenAI API medium 2 / 5
Software freedom (FOSS) medium 8.3
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Is the software free & open-source, and under what licence? 5 = fully FOSS under an OSI-approved licence; 1 = proprietary / closed source.

The product itself medium 1 / 5

Closed weights and closed source.

Microsoft Azure medium 2 / 5

Some OSS (VS Code, .NET) but the cloud platform is proprietary.

OpenAI API medium 1 / 5

Closed weights and closed source despite the name.

Upstream labour medium 25.0
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Chip fabrication, warehouse, data-labelling conditions. Follows provenance.

Microsoft Azure medium 2 / 5
OpenAI API medium 2 / 5