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ChatGPT鈥檚 interface fueled the technology鈥檚 phenomenal rise to prominence.
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By
Assistant Teaching Professor of Information Science
Introduction
ChatGPT was launched on Nov. 30, 2022, ushering in what many have called . Within days of its release, ChatGPT went viral. Screenshots of conversations snowballed across social media, and the use of ChatGPT skyrocketed to an extent that seems to have surprised even its maker, OpenAI. By January, ChatGPT was seeing 13 million unique visitors each day, for the fastest-growing user base of a consumer application.
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 , I find that ChatGPT鈥檚 influence in society comes as much from how people view and use it as the technology itself.
Generative AI systems like ChatGPT are becoming pervasive. Since ChatGPT鈥檚 release, some mention of AI has seemed obligatory in presentations, conversations and articles. Today, OpenAI claims .
Besides people interacting with ChatGPT at home, employees at all levels in businesses are using the AI chatbot. In tech, generative AI is being called , which debuted in 2007. All the major players , and venture funding .
Along the way, ChatGPT has raised numerous concerns, such as its implications for , , and . In my world of higher education, , which has become .
Lessons from ChatGPT’s First Year
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. And even OpenAI鈥檚 other products, such as DALL-E, did not make the waves that ChatGPT did immediately upon its release. It was the chat-based interface that set off AI鈥檚 breakout year.
There is something uniquely beguiling about chat. Humans are endowed with language, and conversation is a primary way people interact with each other and infer intelligence. A chat-based interface is a natural mode for interaction and a way for people to experience the 鈥渋ntelligence鈥 of an AI system. The phenomenal success of ChatGPT shows again that user interfaces drive widespread adoption of technology, from the Macintosh to web browsers and the iPhone. Design makes the difference.
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At the same time, one of the technology鈥檚 principal strengths 鈥 generating convincing language 鈥 makes it well suited for producing false or misleading information. ChatGPT and other generative AI systems make it easier for criminals and propagandists to prey on human vulnerabilities. The potential of the technology to is one of the key rationales for regulating AI.
Amid the , the technology has also provided another case study in the power of hype. This year has brought no shortage of articles on and how .
ChatGPT is not the first technology to be hyped as 鈥渢he next big thing,鈥 but it is perhaps unique in simultaneously being hyped as an existential risk. Numerous tech titans and even some AI researchers have warned about the risk of , though I believe that these fears are far-fetched.
The media environment , and the current venture funding climate further fuels AI hype in particular. Playing to people鈥檚 hopes and fears is a recipe for anxiety with none of the ingredients for wise decision making.
What the Future May Hold
The AI floodgates opened in 2023, but the next year may bring a slowdown. AI development is likely to and encounter infrastructural hurdles such as and . Simultaneously, .
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, like when and where ChatGPT is most useful.
ChatGPT and other generative AI systems will settle into people鈥檚 workflows, allowing workers to accomplish some tasks faster and with fewer errors. In the same way that people learned 鈥渢o google鈥 for information, humans will need to learn new practices for working with generative AI tools.
But the outlook for 2024 isn鈥檛 completely rosy. It is shaping up to be , and AI-generated content will almost certainly be used to influence public opinion and stoke division. Meta may have , but this isn鈥檛 likely to stop ChatGPT and similar tools from being used to create and spread false or misleading content.
Political misinformation spread across social media as well as , and it is virtually certain that . Even outside social media, conversations with ChatGPT and similar products .
As a result, another lesson that everyone 鈥 users of ChatGPT or not 鈥 will have to learn in the blockbuster technology鈥檚 second year is to be vigilant when it comes to digital media of all kinds.
Originally by , 11.29.2023, under the terms of a license.