by Cointelegraph reflects on the artificial intelligence pause that never happened,
a lawsuit that could change the entire AI industry, and the Sam Altman firing and rehiring drama.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT is, by the numbers, the most popular artificial intelligence (AI) tool in the world.
It was launched a year ago, on Nov. 30, 2022, and catapulted to 100 million monthly users within its first three months.
On its one-year anniversary, ChatGPT now boasts 100 million weekly users, and according to Google Trends data, it is currently at the height of its global popularity.
In just 12 months, ChatGPT’s existence has contributed to narratives surrounding the extinction of
humankind, accusations that OpenAI built it by allegedly committing mass-scale copyright
infringement, and a tumultuous CEO firing and rehiring that pundits are still trying to understand.
ChatGPT’s existential threat to humanity
In March 2023, thousands of researchers, CEOs, academics and pundits involved in the field of AI
signed an open letter calling on AI developers around the world to pause the development of any
AI systems that are more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months, sharing concerns that
“human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity,” among other things.
While the efficacy and viability of a global, self-imposed pause on AI development is still being
debated, the letter had almost no discernable impact on the industry. OpenAI and its competitors,
such as Anthropic, Google and Elon Musk — one of the signatories advocating for the pause —
continued to develop their respective AI endeavors throughout 2023.
