Big Tech in charge as ChatGPT turns one
A year after the history-making release of ChatGPT, the AI revolution is here, but the recent boardroom crisis at OpenAI, the super app's company, has erased any doubt that Big Tech is in charge.
In some ways, the discreet reveal of ChatGPT on November 30 last year was the revenge of the geeks, the unsung researchers and engineers who have been quietly building generative AI behind the scenes.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, a well-known figure in technology circles, but still little known beyond that, with the release of ChatGPT made sure that this unheralded AI tech would get the attention it deserves.
ChatGPT became the fastest adopted app in history (since taken over by Meta's Threads) as users marveled at the generation of poems, recipes -- or whatever the internet could muster -- in just seconds.
Altman's gamble catapulted the 38-year-old Stanford dropout to household name stardom -- making him a sort of philosopher king of AI with world leaders and tycoons hanging on to his every word.
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With AI, "you're in the business of making and selling things you can't put your hands on," said University of Washington historian Margaret O'Mara and author of "The Code", a history of Silicon Valley.
"Having a figurehead of someone who can explain it, especially when it's advanced technology, is really important," she added.
Altman's devotion to AI can often seem quasi-religious.
OpenAI's acolytes are confident that the world will be a better place if they are given free rein (and cash) to build artificial general intelligence - AI at the same level or beyond the capabilities of the human mind.
But the high costs of that sacred mission forced an alliance with Microsoft, the world's second biggest company,
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