“A year ago tonight, we were probably just sitting around the office putting the finishing touches on ChatGPT before the next morning’s launch.”
It’s been a year since ChatGPT was made available to the public, and its creator, Sam Altman — recently reinstalled Open AI CEO — took to X (formerly Twitter) to reflect on the milestone. This past year saw the emergence of artificial intelligence and its transition from sci-fi to reality.
As technology writers, we often witness trends come and go faster than we can observe their impact. In the past, blockchain, crypto, and wearables all had their moments — 5G was supposed to revolutionise people’s lives. But they didn’t drive conversations among politicians and the public as significantly as AI has in 2023. One of the key driving factors behind that was ChatGPT.
Between November 2022 and May 2023, ChatGPT experienced a sudden explosion in usage, evidenced by OpenAI’s web traffic statistics. In November 2022, 152.7 million people visited chat.openai, which had almost doubled by December. By February, the number of visitors had surpassed 1 billion worldwide, and never fell below that mark, peaking at 1.8 billion in May 2023.
At their inaugural developer conference in November 2023, Altman announced that the tool had achieved 100 million weekly active users. Mike Mason, chief AI officer at Thoughtworks, commented: “In its first year, ChatGPT has been a blessing for some and a curse for others. It has opened up the world’s eyes to the seemingly unlimited potential of GenAI and propelled increased investment to underfunded R&D teams. But it’s created a compliance timebomb and opened up Pandora’s Box on responsible use to regulatory challenges.”
“Organisations who strategically invest in AI and data to deliver long-term growth and value will eclipse those that chase short-term gains. Competition is fierce and the pace of innovation is frenetic. NVIDIA is one of the biggest winners of the AI boom so far, as its GPUs are essential for training and running large language models like ChatGPT. In fact, its stock price has more than quadrupled in the last five years.”
So, in what ways has ChatGPT impacted the world in its first year?
2023 has been a breakout year for generative AI — and ChatGPT has led the way. According to McKinsey’s Global Survey on the current state of AI, a third of respondents say their organisations are using gen AI regularly in at least one business function. Given that many of these tools leverage Open AI’s technology, this is some achievement.
The adoption rate is mind-boggling. According to a recent survey, nearly one-quarter of C-suite executives reported that they personally use generative AI for work. Over a quarter of respondents from companies that use AI reported that generative AI is already on their boards’ agendas. What’s more, 40% of respondents say that their organisations will increase their investment in AI because of advances in gen AI.
Understandably, training for ChatGPT has accelerated rapidly. Nearly 800 instructors have created and published over 1,000 courses on Udemy’s training platform related to ChatGPT. These courses have seen more than 2.2 million enrolments, with over 51,000 enrolments in the UK alone.
“Globally, organisations are adopting generative AI in a purposeful and responsible manner, propelling workforce transformation and cultivating a culture that nurtures agility, resilience and competitiveness,” said Greg Brown, president and CEO at Udemy.
“Cutting-edge solutions powered by generative AI have endless potential. At Udemy, we are excited to empower corporations with courses and curated learning paths on emerging skills and lead the transformation to a skills-based economy in this ever-evolving landscape.”
Inevitably, the growing interest in AI has attracted the attention of regulators and politicians, causing some concern earlier this year. A group of tech leaders signed a letter warning that the technology could potentially lead to the extinction of humanity.
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war”, warned a letter from the Centre for AI Safety.
Concerns about how to mitigate risks, while grasping the opportunities offered by the likes of ChatGPT, prompted the UK to hold the world’s first AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in November. World leaders, and several top executives from the tech sphere — including Sam Altman — attended the event, which resulted in a shared agreement for cooperation on future AI legislation.
However, the conference was somewhat gazumped when earlier that week US President Joe Biden revealed his framework for AI legislation. However, not much was decided at the event, except for the addition of two future summits to the calendar where more concrete decisions are expected to be made.
Before ChatGPT went live, several of the biggest names in tech were battling to position themselves as the future of AI — IBM had long been at the forefront with its Watson platform. Google, Microsoft, AWS, and Alibaba were all also making moves in the space.
OpenAI has several major backers, including Microsoft and Elon Musk, so it’s not like the company’s success came out of nowhere. Nonetheless, it shook the tech order.
Google was among the first big tech players to respond. They accelerated the launch of their own AI service, Bard, which went live in March. Unlike the initial ChatGPT, this AI-driven chatbot could connect to the internet and support 137 billion parameters. However, the service received a lukewarm reception, with the chatbot reportedly making several errors in its first technological demonstration.
Another critical competitor of OpenAI is Anthropic, whose chatbot, Claude 2, was launched in March 2023. Claude 2 stands out from other similar products because it prioritises user safety and has a track record of producing less harmful outputs than its competitors.
Even early OpenAI backer Elon Musk, founder of TESLA, wants in on the action. He announced his plans to release his own AI, named Grok.
Sam Altman is clearly a frontrunner in the AI arms race. He leads a company now valued at over $90 billion and positions himself as some kind of AI guru. Until last week, Altman appeared untouchable — until OpenAI’s board decided to remove him. All hell broke loose with letters from staff demanding Altman be reinstated, and veiled threats from backers like Microsoft urging the company to reverse course. Altman returned less than a week later, with more power than ever.
Speaking of Microsoft, CEO Satya Nadella has also played a blinder. As an early backer of ChatGPT, Microsoft has positioned itself as a key ally to OpenAI and has a strong relationship with Altman. Nadella even offered him a job after his temporary sacking. But Microsoft is also embedded within ChatGPT, providing cloud services for the firm, and leveraging its tools to boost its own offering, including Google-rival, Bing.
Nvidia is also seen as a big winner. It recently became the first and only chip company to join the $1 trillion valuation club, due to its position as the key supplier of the chips used to power ChatGPT and other generative AI applications.
“The release of ChatGPT elevated AI to the top of global boardroom agendas practically overnight — and it’s difficult to overstate the impact it has had in terms of the impetus that’s been injected back into the technology industry as a result,” said lead for responsible AI at Accenture, Ray Eitel-Porter.
“What started with discussions of potential use cases has quickly been met with growing questions around safety, security and regulation as the reality of putting powerful AI in the hands of many people became apparent.”
Five ways AI will be used turbocharge organisations in 2024
There is no doubt that generative AI is here to stay, and it seems likely that 2023 was just the beginning. In the space of a year, ChatGPT has gone from being a novelty tool that people could have some fun with, to being embedded in many companies’ operations.
OpenAI has continued to make changes since launching GPT 4 earlier this year. Adding internet access to the service means it has much richer sources of data. They also launched mobile applications for both Android and Apple iOS. The company — which originally launched as a not-for-profit in 2015 — has also launched a commercial arm, to take advantage of opportunities offered by its service.
AI is shaking up how we do business and raising questions for several industries — cyber security, for example. According to a study from SoSafe, 74% of security professionals say artificial intelligence has worsened the cyber threat situation.
“The rise of AI is certainly going to intensify the cyber threat landscape even further. It’s making cybercrime even more professionalised and is further boosting innovation capabilities; hackers are running their operations like big and highly profitable businesses,” said Dr Niklas Hellemann, psychologist and CEO of SoSafe.
“But we should not forget that AI also gives us many new opportunities to defend ourselves against these cyber threats — we can use it for personalisation of awareness training via automatically creating security alerts to inform employees about rising cyber threats, or by further personalising phishing simulations. By becoming more aware and better prepared to spot tactics that are being used to attack us, we can strengthen our defences and fight back in this new age of AI-powered cybercrime.”
As we move into 2024, will AI adoption continue to grow at the same pace? Will it fade away like so many tech trends that have dominated conversations in the past? I asked ChatGPT for an answer…
It said: “Based on the general trend in the field of artificial intelligence, it is likely that AI tools, including ChatGPT and others, will continue to grow and advance.
“Researchers and developers are consistently working on improving AI models, enhancing their capabilities, and addressing limitations. The field of natural language processing, in particular, is dynamic, with ongoing efforts to create more sophisticated and context-aware models.
“Advancements may include improved language understanding, better context retention, reduced biases, and increased efficiency in processing information. Additionally, the integration of AI tools into various applications and industries may continue to expand.
“It’s essential to stay updated with the latest developments in the field to have accurate information about the progress of AI technologies in 2024 and beyond.”
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