Optimists and ‘doomers’ are fighting over the direction of AI research – and those who want speed may have won this round
In November 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a consumer-facing artificial intelligence tool that could hold a conversation with users, answer questions, and generate anything from poems to computer code to health advice. The initial technology was not perfect – it would sometimes “hallucinate”, producing convincing but inaccurate information – but its potential generated enormous attention.
A year later, ChatGPT’s popularity has continued, with 100 million people using it on a weekly basis, and over 92% of Fortune 500 companies and several competitor firms looking to cash in or improve on the technology. But that’s not why ChatGPT’s creator, OpenAI, was in the news this week. Instead, OpenAI was the center of a fierce philosophical debate about what it means to develop artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity.
Sarah Kreps is a professor of government at Cornell University and the director of the Tech Policy Institute
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