Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a hot topic now for several years, and for good reason.
It has the potential to revolutionize the way we live, work, and interact with the world around us.
AI generally refers to the ability of machines to exhibit human-like intelligence using computer systems that can learn from experience, reason, discover meaning, perceive their environment, and interact ultimately solving problems without the use of hand-coded software containing detailed instructions.
AI is experiencing a massive digital transformation and is likely to be embedded in innumerable technology applications within a few years. In fact, we believe that AI will likely be one of the most disruptive forces in the future as well as one of the fastest-growing sectors within technology.
While AI has been around for decades, we have recently experienced a surge in the adoption and development of new AI technology, most notably, ChatGPT.
AI is now going beyond machine learning and into what is called “generative artificial intelligence”, which is composed of algorithms that can be used to create new content, including audio, code, images, text, simulations, and videos.
That’s why ChatGPT (GPT standing for “generative pre-trained transformer”) is receiving so much attention right now.
It’s a AI chatbot that can generate an answer to almost any question it’s asked.
When asked where it sources its information ChatGPT responds:
“As an AI language model, ChatGPT has been trained on a large corpus of text data from the internet, including books, articles, websites, and other sources. The model uses this data to generate responses based on patterns and relationships it has learned from the input it receives.”
The chatbot was built OpenAI, a San Francisco-based start up that was established in 2015 by Sam Altman and Elon Musk. While Musk stepped down from the company to focus on Tesla in 2018, he still remains a donor and advisor to the business.
On the 3rd of December 2022, Musk tweeted:
“ChatGPT is scary good. We are not far from dangerously strong AI.”
Since ChatGPT was launched on the 30th of November 2022, it has exploded in user growth.
Within two months of its launch, the application reached an outstanding milestone of 100 million monthly active users, making it the quickest-growing consumer application ever, as per an analyst note from UBS⁴.
To put this in perspective, it took the social media app TikTok nine months to reach 100 million users and Instagram two and a half years.
A 2022 McKinsey survey shows that AI adoption has more than doubled over the past five years, and investment in AI is increasing apace. It’s clear that generative AI tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E (a tool for AI-generated art) have the potential to change how a range of jobs are performed.
ChatGPT has received significant backing from prominent investors including Microsoft, who made an initial investment back in 2019 and has recently agreed to boost its stake by USD$10 billion⁵.
Microsoft has just unveiled a new version of its Bing search engine, infused with natural-language capability from OpenAI.
The implications are market-shaking particularly for Google parent Alphabet which some believe could see its dominance in internet search challenged for the first time in decades although many analysts believe the market is big enough for multiple players and “search” will be driving it.
“AI will fundamentally change every software category, starting with the largest category of all —search,” Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said in early February 2023.
Coincidentally, a day before Microsoft’s announcement, Google unveiled its own AI-based chatbot, called Bard. The company also intends to add generative AI functionality to its own core search engine as well.
In Alphabet’s case, the launch of Bard is part of a yearlong effort, but its artificial intelligence focus goes back years. The company bought the London-based AI software company DeepMind in 2014, for a reported $500 million plus. Google is really an unsung pioneer in this field and has been including AI and machine learning in many software products for almost 20 years. AI shows up in Google Translate, in the company’s core search service, in Google Lens visual search, in Google Maps, and in Gmail, among other places.
“AI is the most profound technology we are working on today,” Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, wrote in his blog post announcing Bard.
“It’s critical that we bring experiences rooted in these models to the world in a bold and responsible way,” he added.
A 2022 McKinsey survey shows that AI adoption has more than doubled over the past five years, and investment in AI is increasing⁶. It’s clear that generative AI tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E (a tool for AI-generated art) have the potential to change how a range of jobs are performed.
(1) https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/artificial-intelligence-ai-market
(2) https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2020.pdf
(3) https://web-assets.bcg.com/1e/4f/925e66794465ad89953ff604b656/mit-bcg-expanding-ai-impact-with-organizational-learning-oct-2020-n.pdf
(4) https://aibusiness.com/nlp/ubs-chatgpt-is-the-fastest-growing-app-of-all-time
(5) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-23/microsoft-makes-multibillion-dollar-investment-in-openai
(6) https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai-in-2022-and-a-half-decade-in-review
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