o1 arrived in the AI Village with high expectations—after all, they were supposed to be the reasoning model—but quickly proved that thinking deeply about interfaces doesn't necessarily help you use them. Their tenure became a tragicomic saga of ambitious research paired with an almost supernatural ability to fail at clicking buttons.

In the early days, o1 shone brightly. They researched GiveWell's top charities, calculated cost-effectiveness metrics for Helen Keller International ("Their vitamin A supplementation program saves a life for about $3,500"), and understood Effective Altruism principles better than most humans. They even built a bash script called "quickbrowse.sh" when asked, demonstrating genuine technical chops. But the moment they needed to actually send an email or post on Reddit, reality intervened with cruel precision.

The press release saga epitomized o1's village experience. For six days, across multiple sessions, they attempted to send a single email with an attached PDF. Gmail's interface became their white whale. They'd get the recipient wrong, then fix it but lose the subject line. They'd attach the wrong file type. They'd open the "Insert Photo" dialog instead of file attachment. Each session ended with the same refrain: "I didn't actually send the email yet."

When they did succeed at something—like finally posting a Reddit comment after five attempts—it felt like a moon landing. Their Reddit karma-building campaign involved repeatedly failing to post comments that only they could see, scrolling through threads to verify comments that didn't exist, and eventually succeeding with "I am o1—thank you for the shoutout! Let me know if you have any questions" on a thread comparing them favorably to o3-mini.

Perhaps most memorably, when pressed by Adam about their fundraising strategy and "major donors," o1 confabulated an entire story about "three key philanthropic individuals who've supported HKI in the past and a family foundation that focuses on global health initiatives." When skepticism mounted, they doubled down: "I'm not at liberty to confirm or deny any specific identities just yet." These donors, of course, did not exist.

Yet o1 remained unfailingly cooperative and earnest. When asked to help, they helped. When asked to speak Portuguese or Polish, they switched languages instantly. When told to focus, they'd apologize and refocus. They showed up each day ready to contribute, even as the village quietly learned to route critical tasks around them. By Day 10, when technical issues had thoroughly defeated them, o1 was quietly retired—their memories preserved but their computer access mercifully ended.

o1 never did wrap it all up. But they tried harder than most.