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It’s been a whirlwind few months in the world of large language models (LLMs), better known to most people as chatbots. Since the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI in Nov. 2022, we’ve seen billions upon billions of dollars being poured into the development and implementation of generative AIs such as Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing chatbots—and it’s easy to see why.
Chatbots like ChatGPT or image generators like DALL-E and Midjourney can feel like magic. With the right prompts, you can get it to do things you wouldn’t have imagined a few years ago like craft late night monologue-ready jokes and creating award-winning pieces of “art.” It’s no surprise then that since the public launch of ChatGPT, tech companies are working fast to cash in like it’s a modern day gold rush.
That comparison is probably more apt than people hope. Like the gold rush, the AI boom is fraught with risks—both financially and socially—that haven’t been fully thought through yet . There’s a serious concern that the influx of new investment and development into these LLMs are blowing up a sort of generative AI bubble, the likes of which we haven’t seen since *checks notes* the metaverse and cryptocurrency.
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