On November 30, 2022, OpenAI innocently introduced a up-to-date product to the world describing it as “a model called ChatGPT that interacts in a conversational way.”
It’s not a stretch to suggest that ChatGPT later transformed the world of business and technology, becoming wildly popular – it still tops Apple’s free app charts – while also serving as a catalyst for a flood of generative AI products.
It even made people suspect the line that no chatbot will ever take away from me.
In fact, “Artificial Intelligence Empire” author Karen Hao argued in a recent interview with TechCrunch that OpenAI has “already grown more powerful than any nation state in the world” and is now “reshaping our geopolitics, our entire lives.”
There may be even more dramatic changes to come. Charlie Warzel – he wrote in “Atlantyk”. that we now live in a “world built by ChatGPT” that is “defined by a particular kind of precarity” and “constantly waiting for the shoe to drop.”
“Young generations feel this instability acutely as they prepare to enter the labor market, where they are warned that their career path may be unpredictable,” Warzel said. “Older generations are also being told that the future may be unrecognizable and that the skills they have acquired in the market may not be relevant.”
Of course, others are more positive about an AI-centric future and actually stand to reap gigantic benefits from it. But according to Warzel, AI advocates and investors are waiting along with everyone else – waiting to see if their bets will pay off, but also waiting “because the hallmark of generative AI, according to its true advocates, is that it never reaches its final form.”
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Meanwhile, Bloomberg took a closer look at the focus how ChatGPT changed the stock market. The most obvious winner so far is Nvidia, with its stock up 979% since the chatbot launched. But the AI fever has also buoyed other Gigantic Tech companies, including the seven most valuable stocks in the S&P 500 – Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Broadcom – all tech-related, with their combined growth accounting for almost half of the benchmark’s 64% gain since ChatGPT’s launch.
This made the market more congested. The S&P 500 is weighted based on market capitalization, and the same seven companies now make up 35% of the index, up from about 20% three years ago.
How long will this growth last? With the notable exception of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, AI executives are increasingly acknowledging that we may be in a bubble (or, if you prefer, a “mania”).
“Someone is going to lose a phenomenal amount of money in AI” – OpenAI CEO Altman himself said this during a dinner with journalists in August.
Similarly, Sierra CEO and OpenAI board chairman Bret Taylor agreed that we are in a “bubble,” comparing it to the dot-com boom of the slow 1990s. While individual companies may fail, he predicted that “AI will transform the economy, and I think, like the Internet, it will create enormous economic value in the future.”
In another three years – or less – we may know whether this optimism was justified.