Episode Details

I’ve been playing with a new technology this week, which, I think, is as potentially transformative as Google’s search engine, Facebook’s network or Apple’s iPhone. It’s that significant. 

Elon Musk says it’s “scary good”; Google management is so worried about it they have issued a “code red”; and it has achieved in just five days what took Netflix three and a half years. 

And it’s going to put me out of a job. 

This is Open AI’s latest offering ChatGPT - short for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer. 

Open AI, if you are not familiar with it, is a research institute that develops artificial intelligence.  

The company has developed language models that can generate human-like text and neural networks that can create images from text descriptions. Its founders include many of the world's most famous tech entrepreneurs, not least Elon Musk, and it is funded by private donations and research contracts. Its lofty “ultimate goal is to benefit humanity through the responsible development of AI”. 

I first heard about ChatGPT from my son when he came back from university last weekend.  

Apparently, loads of students are getting it to write their essays for them. Academics, reports the Guardian, say it generates exam responses that “would result in full marks if submitted by an undergraduate”.  

Programmers meanwhile, the Guardian continues, “have used the tool to solve coding challenges in obscure programming languages in a matter of seconds – before writing limericks explaining the functionality.” 

I was discussing it on Twitter and User @Peng33G got it to write a perfectly passable song in the style of Dominic Frisby.  

I urge you to go and have a play.

To give you an idea of how quickly this thing has found users, cast your eyes over the following, which shows the amount of time to reach one million users. 

Netflix → 3.5 years Airbnb → 2 years Facebook → 10 months Zoom → 9 months Spotify → 5 months Instagram → 2.5 months iPhone → 74 days ChatGPT → 5 days 

Share this really interesting article on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

To verify the above take would probably take me an hour of research. ChatGP did it in a matter of seconds.  

“The information you provided appears to be accurate”, it said. “Here is a brief summary of the growth of each of the companies or products you mentioned:

* Netflix: It took Netflix approximately 3.5 years to reach one million subscribers. The company was founded in 1997 and reached one million subscribers in 2001.

* Airbnb: It took Airbnb approximately 2 years to reach one million users. The company was founded in 2008 and reached one million users in 2010.

* Facebook: It took Facebook approximately 10 months to reach one million users. The company was founded in 2004 and reached one million users in 2005.

* Zoom: It took Zoom approximately 9 months to reach one million daily meeting participants. The company was founded in 2011 and reached one million daily meeting participants in 2012.

* Spotify: It took Spotify approximately 5 months to reach one million users. The company was founded in 2006 and reached one million users in 2007.

* Instagram: It took Instagram approximately 2.5 months to reach one million users. The company was founded in 2010 and reached one million users in 2010.

* iPhone: It took the iPhone approximately 74 days to reach one million units sold. The iPhone was released in 2007 and reached one million units sold in 2007.

ChatGPT has multiple uses in the real world  

My buddy, business consultant and tech entrepreneur, Danny Richman, mentors, as he puts it, “a young lad with poor literacy skills who is starting a landscaping business. He struggles to communicate wi