ChatGPT was launched in late 2022, ushering in what many have called artificial intelligence’s breakout year. Within days of its release, ChatGPT went viral. Its use skyrocketed to an extent that it seems to have surprised even its maker, OpenAI. By January 2023, ChatGPT was seeing 13 million unique visitors each day.
Throughout this breakout year, ChatGPT has revealed the power of a good interface and the perils of hype, and it has sown the seeds of a new set of human behaviors. As a researcher who studies technology and human information behavior, I find that ChatGPT’s influence in society comes as much from how people view and use it as the technology itself.
Employees at all levels up to the C-suite in businesses are using the AI chatbot. In tech, generative AI is being called the biggest platform since the iPhone, which debuted in 2007. All the major players are making AI bets, and venture funding in AI startups is booming.
Along the way, ChatGPT has raised numerous concerns, such as its implications for disinformation, fraud, intellectual property issues and discrimination.
The success of ChatGPT speaks foremost to the power of a good interface. AI has already been part of countless everyday products for well over a decade, from Spotify and Netflix to Facebook and Google Maps. The first version of GPT, the AI model that powers ChatGPT, dates back to 2018. But it was the chat-based interface that set off AI’s breakout year. GPT stands for generative pre-trained transformer.
There is something uniquely beguiling about chat. A chat-based interface is a natural mode for interaction and a way for people to experience the “intelligence” of an AI system.
At the same time, one of the technology’s principal strengths – generating convincing language – makes it well suited for producing false or misleading information. The potential of the technology to boost fraud and misinformation is one of the key rationales for regulating AI.
The technology has also provided another case study in the power of hype. This year has brought no shortage of articles on how AI is going to transform every aspect of society and how the proliferation of the technology is inevitable.
ChatGPT is perhaps unique in simultaneously being hyped as “the next big thing” and as an existential risk. Numerous tech titans and even some AI researchers have warned about the risk of superintelligent AI systems emerging and wiping out humanity.
The AI floodgates opened in 2023, but this year may bring a slowdown. AI development is likely to meet technical limitations and encounter infrastructural hurdles such as chip manufacturing and server capacity. Simultaneously, AI regulation is likely to be on the way.
This slowdown should give space for norms in human behavior to form, both in terms of etiquette, as in when and where using ChatGPT is socially acceptable, and effectiveness, such as when and where ChatGPT is most useful.
But the outlook for 2024 isn’t completely rosy. It is shaping up to be a historic year for elections around the world, and AI-generated content will likely be used to influence public opinion and stoke division. Meta may have banned the use of generative AI in political advertising, but this isn’t likely to stop ChatGPT and similar tools from being used to create and spread false or misleading content.
As a result, another lesson that everyone will have to learn is to be vigilant when it comes to digital media of all kinds.
Tim Gorichanaz is an assistant teaching professor of information science at Drexel University. Distributed by The Associated Press.
