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, OpenAI released its AI chatbot to the public, 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.
