The economics of transformative AI.

2022 has seen dramatic advances in AI, particularly in the space of large language models, with progress being made much faster than expected. For the past couple of months, OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT has caught the world’s imagination, demonstrating its impressive writing skills through countless articles, and even outperforming Wharton University students in MBA exams. ChatGPT has gained more than 100 million users in its first two months of existence, marking the fastest digital product launch in history, and is now estimated to produce a volume of text every 14 days that is equivalent to all the printed works of humanity. Its potential is such, and the stakes so high, that Google has decided to launch its own version, Bard, using Google’s existing large language model LaMDA, that can engage in free-flowing conversations with humans.

By Anton Korinek, Professor, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia and Rubenstein Fellow, Brookings.