THE FUTURE OF

People who apply names to things such as eras or movements may someday call early 2023 “The Spring of AI” with no small part played by the market introduction of ChatGPT, a language modeling tool from OpenAI. By the time even astute business analysts and marketing executives were aware students and teachers on a nearly global basis already were negotiating the transaction of artificial intelligence’s offerings in the classroom.

In March if you had asked anyone in their late teens or early 20s if they’d used Open AI’s groundbreaking offering and the answer was a wary “Oh… yeah.” It seemed everyone had used it, but “not a lot”. By May, all of the search engine offerings had followed Bing’s early entry into the artificial intelligence space, the breakthrough was making major magazine covers, literally, and Congressional hearings were underway.

The narrative between lawmakers and corporate heads was unlike anything seen or heard. It went something like “We know we look like magic, but we’re not, it’s a tremendous combination of science and creativity, and, quite frankly, we don’t know where it’s going. Yes, please regulate us, no not on a domestic basis, but through a global effort.”

It was as refreshing as it was bizarre.

And if some of these developments have occurred without much attention paid, the key takeaway is that the technology, the widgets it creates, and the conversations around its ethical use, will impact each and every person. Not will, in fact, but is. From the CX bots to the launch of wildly sophisticated web searches you only recently have begun to see, the wave is washing over us. It is one that likely will be a boon for productivity — think of the calculator replacing the slide rule — but it’s not one that will transition into full use, whatever that is, without breaking existing architecture and creating a consumer vacuum for those who fail to plan as the waters rise.

ChatGPT itself, when asked, said “As society continues to rapidly evolve, one cannot help but wonder