by December 1 (UPI) — ChatGPT launched on November 30, 2022, ushering in what many have called the watershed year of artificial intelligence. Within days of its launch, ChatGPT went viral.
Screenshots of the conversations multiplied on social networks and the use of ChatGPT skyrocketed to a point that seems to have surprised even its creator, OpenAI. In January, ChatGPT was receiving 13 million unique visitors each day, setting a record for the fastest-growing user base for a consumer app.
Throughout this great year, ChatGPT has revealed the power of a good interface and the dangers of hype, and has sown the seeds of a new set of human behaviors. As a researcher who studies human information technology and behavior, I find that ChatGPT’s influence on society comes as much from how people view and use it as it does from the technology itself.
Generative AI systems like ChatGPT are becoming ubiquitous. Since the launch of ChatGPT, some mention of AI seems mandatory in presentations, conversations and articles. Today, OpenAI claims that 100 million people use ChatGPT every week.
In addition to people interacting with ChatGPT at home, employees at all levels up to senior management in companies use the AI chatbot. In technology, generative AI is considered the biggest platform since the iPhone, which debuted in 2007. All the major players are making bets on AI, and venture funding in AI startups is booming.
Along the way, ChatGPT has raised numerous concerns, including its implications for misinformation, fraud, intellectual property issues, and discrimination. In my higher education world, much of the debate has revolved around cheating, which has become the focus of my own research this year.
Lessons from the first year.
The success of ChatGPT speaks mainly to the power of a good interface. AI has been a part of countless everyday products for more than 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’s other products, like DALL-E, didn’t make as much of a splash as ChatGPT immediately after its release. It was the chat-based interface that sparked the watershed year of AI.
There is something uniquely seductive about chat. Humans are endowed with language and conversation is a primary way in which people interact with each other and infer intelligence. A chat-based interface is a natural mode of interaction and a way for people to experience the “intelligence” of an AI system. The phenomenal success of ChatGPT demonstrates once again that user interfaces drive widespread adoption of technology, from the Macintosh to web browsers to the iPhone. The design makes the difference.
At the same time, one of the technology’s main strengths – generating compelling language – makes it well suited to producing false or misleading information. ChatGPT and other generative AI systems make it easier for criminals and propagandists to exploit human vulnerabilities. The potential for technology to drive fraud and misinformation is one of the key rationales for regulating AI.
Amid the true promises and dangers of generative AI, the technology has also provided another case study in the power of advertising. This year there has been no shortage of articles about how AI is going to transform all aspects of society and how the proliferation of technology is inevitable.
ChatGPT is not the first technology to be touted as “the next big thing,” but it is perhaps unique in being simultaneously touted as an existential risk. Numerous technology titans and even some AI researchers have warned of the risk of superintelligent AI systems emerging that wipe out humanity, although I think these fears are implausible.
The media environment favors hype, and the current venture funding climate further fuels the hype of AI in particular. Playing on people’s hopes and fears is a recipe for anxiety without any of the ingredients necessary to make sound decisions.
The future
The AI floodgates opened in 2023, but next year may bring a slowdown. AI development is likely to face technical limitations and infrastructural obstacles, such as chip manufacturing and server capacity. At the same time, AI regulation is likely on the way.
This slowdown should give room for norms to form in human behavior, both in terms of etiquette, such as when and where using ChatGPT is socially acceptable, and effectiveness, such as when and where ChatGPT is most useful.
ChatGPT and other generative AI systems will be installed in people’s workflows, allowing workers to perform some tasks faster and with fewer errors. In the same way that people learned to “Google information,” humans will need to learn new practices for working with generative AI tools.
But the prospects for 2024 are not entirely rosy. It is shaping up to be a historic year for elections around the world, and AI-generated content will almost certainly be used to influence public opinion and stoke division. Meta may have banned the use of generative AI in political advertising, but this is unlikely to stop ChatGPT and similar tools from being used to create and spread false or misleading content.
Political misinformation spread on social media in 2016, as well as in 2020, and generative AI will almost certainly be used to continue those efforts in 2024. Even outside of social media, conversations with ChatGPT and similar products can be sources of misinformation about their own.
As a result, another lesson that everyone (ChatGPT users or not) will have to learn in the second year of this successful technology is to be attentive to digital media of all kinds.
Tim Gorichanaz is an assistant professor of information sciences at Drexel University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
