Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia to Sam Altman, check out the wild Generative AI ride in 2023

After Generative AI, spearheaded by OpenAI, took center stage, dominant tech corporations like Google, Microsoft, Amazon were fast to claim a stake in the burgeoning field, featuring a prominent sideshow role for Sam Altman. ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot powered by OpenAI, rapidly gained mainstream popularity even before 2023 came to a close. After its launch on November 30, OpenAI was predicted to earn nearly $1 billion in 2024, according to insiders who spoke to Reuters. The vast language model demonstrated its capability to turn prompts into poems, songs, and even high school essays, thereby gaining the attention of 100 million users in only two months – a feat that Facebook took four and a half years to accomplish and Twitter took five, making it the most rapidly growing consumer app in history. Some of its responses were inaccurate, a phenomenon so frequent it resulted in the term “hallucinate” being chosen as Dictionary.com's word of the year, signifying AI's capacity to produce incorrect information. This snag did not reduce the excitement surrounding the technology or the existential fear it incited. Led by Microsoft's massive investment in OpenAI, investors poured $27 billion into Generative AI startups in 2023, as reported by Pitchbook. The AI supremacy battle that had been brewing among tech giants gained visibility with Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon.com announcing new breakthroughs. By March, various scientists and AI professionals, including Elon Musk, called for a halt to the development of more powerful systems to evaluate their societal impacts and potential threats. This action drew comparisons to “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan's blockbuster movie about the nuclear bomb creator's warnings of potential human extinction due to unchecked progress. Geoffrey Hinton, one of the founding fathers of AI, resigned from Alphabet in May, calling it an “existential risk.” Consulting firm PwC predicted that the economic ramifications of AI could hit $15.7 trillion around the globe by 2030, almost equivalent to China's gross domestic product. This growth is driven by the adoption of AI technologies across diverse sectors like finance, legal, manufacturing, and entertainment. In the AI era, the winners and losers are just beginning to surface. Advocacy groups for civil rights have voiced concerns about potential AI biases, especially in recruitment, while labor unions have raised alarms about job disruptions as AI may eliminate certain roles, including computer programming and content creation. Nvidia, the silicon chip maker whose graphics processors are in high demand in the global AI race, has seen its market capitalization shoot up to join the trillion-dollar club with Apple and Alphabet. Towards the end of the year, OpenAI's board of directors ousted CEO Sam Altman for “consistent dishonesty.” But Altman was reinstated in a few days due to pressure from OpenAI employees who threatened to leave the company without him. Altman's dismissal caused a situation of division between supporters of AI commercialization and those calling for caution. Ultimately, the proponents of AI commercialization won, including Altman. In 2024, one question arising from the OpenAI controversy is whether the debate about AI's future and societal impact will keep happening behind closed doors, within the confines of the Silicon Valley elite. With regulation proposals like the EU AI Act, European regulators intend to play a pivotal role in setting boundary conditions for the technology. These proposed regulations, along with other similar policies being considered in the UK and the US, surface as we approach the largest election year in history - with concerns over AI-generated misinformation aimed at voters. In 2023 alone, NewsGuard, a company that rates news and information websites, noted 614 “untrustworthy” AI-generated sites in 15 languages - from English to Arabic and Chinese. AI may play a significant role in the upcoming elections, considering it's already been used for campaign calls in the U.S. Thus, regardless of its implications, AI is anticipated to significantly influence many of the elections happening this year. You can read other top stories like Gung ho on AI Jobs? about a Nobel Prize-winning physicist urging caution about pursuing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education exclusively. He believes creative skills could thrive in an AI-dominated world. What is dropshipping? discusses how online retailers operate, and Influencers Rising! on the increasing influence of social media influencers in various sectors, from cinema to politics, in 2024.