The Year ChatGPT Changed Almost Everything
12/01/2023 07:58
The launch of ChatGPT one year ago brought artificial intelligence into the public consciousness and sparked a wave of investment and hiring across industries. It also created a new era of AI anxiety.
When AI researcher Sasha Luccioni went to business conferences and speaking events last year, she would field basic questions like: “What is artificial intelligence?” Now, she said, the people she meets are not only familiar with AI, they’re worried about whether it will “take over the world.”
What changed, she said, was ChatGPT. On Nov. 30 last year, the public gained access to OpenAI’s chatbot, which could create expansive — though not always reliable — written responses to simple prompts from users. It fundamentally shifted how people think about artificial intelligence, if they ever thought about it at all.
For years, tech companies used AI to make recommendations, detect harmful content online and power self-driving cars. With ChatGPT, however, AI wasn’t just something operating under the hood of products; it was the product.