On November 30, 2022, OpenAI introduced a new product to the world, harmlessly describing it as “a model called ChatGPT that interacts in a conversational way”.
It’s no exaggeration to suggest that ChatGPT subsequently transformed the worlds of business and technology, becoming hugely popular – it still tops Apple’s free app rankings today – while also serving as a catalyst for a flood of productive AI products.
It has even made people suspicious of em dash, which no chatbot will ever get from me.
In fact, “Empire of AI” author Karen Hao argued in a recent interview with TechCrunch that OpenAI “has already become more powerful than almost any nation-state in the world” and is now “reshaping our geopolitics, all our lives.”
There may be even more dramatic changes in the future. Charlie Warzel he wrote in The Atlantic that we now live in the “world that ChatGPT built”, which is “defined by a certain type of precariousness” and is “constantly waiting for a shoe to drop”.
“New generations feel this instability keenly as they prepare to graduate into a workforce where they are warned that there may not be a predictable career path,” Warzel said. “Older generations also say the future may be unknowable, that the marketable skills they’ve honed may not be relevant.”
Of course, others feel more optimistic about an AI-centric future and indeed stand to benefit greatly from it. But as Warzel says, AI boosters and investors are waiting along with everyone else — waiting to see if their bets pay off, but also waiting “because a defining characteristic of genetic AI, according to its true believers, is that it’s never in its final form.”
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Meanwhile, Bloomberg took a more focused look how ChatGPT has transformed the stock market. The most obvious winner so far is Nvidia, with its shares up 979% since the chatbot’s launch. But AI fever has also boosted other big tech companies, with the seven most valuable companies in the S&P 500 — Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Broadcom — all connected to the technology, and their collective growth accounting for nearly half of the benchmark’s 64% rise since ChatGPT’s launch.
This has created a heavier market. The S&P 500 is weighted by market capitalization, and the same seven companies now account for 35% of the weighting, compared with about 20% three years ago.
How long will this development last? With the notable exception of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, it’s becoming increasingly common for AI executives to acknowledge that we may be in a bubble (or if you prefer, a “craze”).
“Somebody’s Going to Lose an Amazing Amount of Money in Artificial Intelligence,” OpenAI CEO Says Sam Altman said in August at a dinner with reporters.
Similarly, Sierra CEO and OpenAI board chairman Bret Taylor agreed that we are “in a bubble” that he compared to the dot-com boom of the late 90s. While individual companies may fail, he predicted, “Artificial intelligence will transform the economy and I think, like the internet, it will create enormous amounts of economic value in the future.”
In another three years – or less – we may know whether that optimism was justified.
