- 2023 has been a busy year in the field of artificial intelligence.
- People are increasingly using the technology in both business and personal settings
2023 has been quite the year for artificial intelligence.
Take ChatGPT. Even though OpenAI launched the chatbot just last November, nearly one hundred million people are now using it each week, CEO Sam Altman said a year after the chatbot's release.
Speaking of Altman, how about the long weekend of his ousting — and reinstatement — as head of OpenAI, which made him even more of a household name and kept tech watchers glued to the news?
AI evolution and adoption doesn't seem like it's going to slow down in 2024. The world is only at the beginning of a revolution — especially in the corporate world, according to Michael Chui, a McKinsey partner who leads research on the current state of generative AI.
While "change is hard," companies will continue to have to grapple with how to teach their employees AI skills and implement the technology responsibly, he told Business Insider.
Joshua Builta, a research director at Omdia, also pointed to challenges ahead. AI can still spew out wrong answers, and there appears to be a lack of talent needed to build language models, amongst other concerns, he said at this year's NYC AI Summit.
But before we ring in 2024 and all it may herald in the space, BI took a look back over some key points from the last year in AI.
The leadership tussles at OpenAI
In mid-November, things appeared to boil over at ChatGPT owner OpenAI. On a Friday, Sam Altman was ousted as CEO after the board agreed that it was no longer confident in his ability to continue leading the company, shocking the tech community. But in the following days, hundreds of OpenAI employees signed a letter threatening to quit unless the board stepped down and Altman was reinstated as CEO.
During that period, Altman also got offered a role at Microsoft — a large OpenAI stakeholder — leading the software giant's new AI department along with Greg Brockman, the president of OpenAI.
Then, on the following Tuesday and after much outrage in the business community, Altman returned to his position as CEO of OpenAI. A new board was also created following his return. Altman has been very tight-lipped about the reasons behind the drama (though disagreements about the speed of AI development may have factored into it), but one thing everyone can agree on: It was a very long five days for all involved.
The AI chatbot wars heated up
OpenAI wasn't just contending with leadership upheaval: It's also faced a slew of rival chatbots.
In February, Microsoft unveiled its new Bing search engine with generative AI capabilities. That same week, Google announced its AI chatbot it calls Bard. That's now powered by Gemini, the search engine's AI model that the company claims will be more powerful than OpenAI's GPT-4 model.
Then, in November, xAI, an AI company started by Elon Musk, launched Grok. The tech billionaire calls it the "anti-woke" alternative to ChatGPT. (BI tested Grok, and it's… spicy.)
Money poured into the AI space…
Microsoft kicked off 2023 by pushing an additional $10 billion into OpenAI. In September, Amazon said it'll invest $4 billion into Anthropic, another OpenAI rival. That same month, Ernst & Young, unveiled plans to teach its 400,000 employees how to use AI in the workplace as part of its $1.4 billion investment in the field.
It's not just big companies trying to take part in the AI gold rush. Venture capital firms have placed eight-figure bets on AI startups.
…and companies spent big on AI talent…
Tech titans like Meta, Amazon, and Netflix have been hiring workers — some for as much as $900,000 a year — who can build AI models. Non-tech companies in the legal, healthcare, and education sectors have also been looking to fill roles that seek experience using ChatGPT for six-figure salaries.
Generative AI is also creating new opportunities. Jobs like prompt engineer, chief AI officer, AI ethicist, generative AI strategist, and AI data trainer have emerged. There's also a cottage industry of new side hustles like ChatGPT courses, AI-content editing services, and AI-focused newsletters.
…but we saw there's a very real human cost to AI development
Behind the impressive capabilities of some AI chatbots: contract labor.
In January, Time published an investigation detailing the brutal working conditions that Kenyan data labelers faced when training ChatGPT to generate safe responses. Workers reported going through troves of potentially illegal content that includes child sexual abuse, bestiality, and rape for less than $2 an hour.
Concerns about AI job replacement have grown
Workers' fears of robots taking their jobs is nothing new, but the advent of ChatGPT has only deepened their concerns.
A Goldman Sachs report from March found that generative AI could disrupt around 300 million full-time jobs, especially in white-collar professions. ChatGPT can do things like develop code, generate marketing materials, create lesson plans, and write legal briefs. The potential for AI job replacement is, in part, why thousands of Hollywood writers went on strike earlier this year.
But while some business leaders like Elon Musk predict that AI will create a world without jobs, others believe that's a little far fetched. "AI won't take your job," economist Richard Baldwin said during a panel at the 2023 World Economic Forum's Growth Summit. "It's somebody using AI that will take your job." "
And concern over how AI is used has also grown
Ilya Sutskever, a cofounder of OpenAI, predicts that AI could create new problems like a rise in fake news and cyberattacks, automated AI weapons, and even "infinitely stable dictatorships."
Some bad actors are already using AI to deceive others for personal gain. AI phone scams, where would-be criminals use voice changers to impersonate peoples' loved ones in an attempt to steal money, have gotten more sophisticated. Spam bots have tried to scam some people into investing in fake cryptocurrencies.
And generative AI is blurring the line between fiction and reality. This year, some college students were accused of plagiarism after professors accused them of submitting essays they believed were AI-generated. Content detectors have been found to be unreliable.
False information has only become more rampant as a result of generative AI. NewsGuard, a site that tracks online misinformation, identified 614 unreliable AI-generated news websites as of December 18. Deepfakes— AI-generated images, videos, and audio designed to be indistinguishable from the real world — now appear to be more convincing and harder to detect than ever before.
And as of July, major firms like Apple, Deutsche Bank, Amazon issued bans or restrictions on using ChatGPT at work due to data privacy concerns.
That's prompting governments to seek to regulate AI
In October, US President Joe Biden signed a new executive order urging the most influential tech companies to be more transparent about how they're developing their AI.
Two months later, the European Union reached a provisional agreement on its AI Act. Dubbed "the world's first rules on AI," it aims to establish legal guidelines around how companies can develop the technology to ensure that it's safe and environmentally sustainable.
The Brazilian government is also working on a policy to oversee AI risks.
People are also using generative AI in their personal lives
Curious users have flocked to ChatGPT to help them plan trips, find an apartment, overcome learning challenges, and lose weight.
AI aficionados are even pushing to new extremes. Some have fallen in love with AI chatbots; others have used it to mourn the death of loved ones. Earlier this year, Match Group, the parent company behind popular dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge, announced its plans to integrate AI to help singles flirt, land more dates, and eliminate ghosting.
There was a rise in AI hardware
Many tech aficionados expect new generative AI gadgets to be the iPhones of the AI era.
In September, Meta launched its second version of its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which the company says can livestream footage onto Facebook or Instagram. Owners of the shades can speak to Meta's conversational AI assistant using their voice.
Two months later, Humane.ai announced the waitlist for its AI pin. It's a wearable device the company claims can project text onto your hand, search through your phone using voice commands, and even calculate how many grams of protein are in a handful of almonds.
Plus, OpenAI's Altman is reportedly in talks with Jony Ive, the designer of the iPhone, to create an AI-powered device.
And the world moved closer to achieving AGI — at least according to some leaders
Artificial general intelligence is the ability for AI to perform complex cognitive tasks like the ability to make decisions without human intervention.
Jensen Huang, the cofounder and CEO of Nvidia, the chip giant helping power the AI revolution, says that AGI will be achieved in just five years. John Carmack, an ex-Meta exec, believes AGI will be reached by the 2030s and be worth trillions.
Still, hat doesn't mean AI will takeover the world. Instead, business leaders say that in the next decade, everyone will have AI assistants, as well as access to free doctors and lawyers.