Microsoft’s Sudden AI Dominance Is Scrambling Silicon Valley’s Power Structure

There are two ways of looking at ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot that hundreds of millions of people have tried out since its release late last year. One view, preferred by many politicians and journalists as well as the company that created the app, is that its release was an historic development on par with the Industrial Revolution—or, more troublingly, the atomic bomb. OpenAI’s co-founder, Sam Altman, has warned that future versions of the underlying software, a large language model known as GPT-4, could wipe out the human race.

The other way to look at ChatGPT is as a vehicle for viral hype. Play around with the software for a few minutes, and it’s obvious that the potential for Armageddon has its limits. The app struggles with middle school math, can’t tell you what happened last week and is basically the machine equivalent of a compulsive liar. But it’s already true that the software is beyond Altman’s power to fully control.