ChatGPT has sparked imaginations around the world, with everyone from professors to advertisers, hackers and judges thinking about how to use its capabilities. But what is the person thinking behind it all?
Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, a company that develops artificial intelligence chatbots. For them, ChatGPT is useful as a time saver – especially when reading long articles or email threads.
Asked about “the best thing you’ve done with GPT so far” in a new one Forbes interview, he refused to specify one thing. But he agreed to share the items he found as “personal utility”.
The answer may come as a surprise.
“The summary was really big for me, more than I thought it would be,” he said. “The fact that I can just have a full article or a long email thread summarized is more useful than I thought.”
This will be seen as the use of AI chatbots which many believe will disrupt Google’s search engine business. Microsoft is investing billions into OpenAI with a focus on weaving the technology into all kinds of products, including Google rival Bing.
But Altman downplays the ability of ChatGPT to replace the traditional search, and does not see the most interesting to focus on.
“I mean, I don’t think ChatGPT [replace Search],” he said Forbes. “But I think one day, AI systems can. But, more than that, I think people just miss opportunities if you focus on yesterday’s news. I’m more interested in thinking about what goes beyond search. I don’t remember what we did before searching the web, I’m too young.”
He notes that another way ChatGPT has been useful to him is through coding. The tool gives him “the ability to ask esoteric programming questions or help debug code in a way that feels like I have a super programmer to talk to,” he says.
However they use it, Altman has been betting that enough people find ChatGPT useful enough to pay $42 per month for the premium version, which the company launched last week. Paying customers can use ChatGPT despite high demand, enjoy faster response speeds, and get priority access to new features.
And ChatGPT actually goes out of service quite often due to the large number of users. Regardless, people keep coming back to it — a sign of a “good product market,” Elad Gil, a respected Google alum and angel investor, noted last week.
ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly active users faster than TikTok or Instagram, UBS analysts noted this week, adding, “In 20 years after the internet space, we cannot remember a faster ramp in consumer internet applications.”
Learn how to navigate and strengthen trust in your business with The Trust Factor, a weekly newsletter that examines what leaders need to succeed. Log in here.