Here’s Proof the AI Boom Is Real: More People Are Tapping ChatGPT at Work

Ever since the rollout of ChatGPT in November 2022, many people in science, business, and media have been obsessed with AI. A cursory look at my own published work during that period fingers me as among the guilty. My defense is that I share with those other obsessives a belief that large language models are the leading edge of an epochal transformation. Maybe I’m swimming in generative Kool-Aid, but I believe AI advances within our grasp will change not only the way we work, but the structure of businesses, and ultimately the course of humanity.

Not everyone agrees, and in recent months there’s been a backlash. AI has been oversold and overhyped, some experts now opine. Self-styled AI-critic-in-chief Gary Marcus recently said of the LLM boom, “It wouldn’t surprise me if, to some extent, this whole thing fizzled out.” Others claim that AI is mired in the “trough of disillusionment.”

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This week we got some data that won’t resolve the larger questions but provides a snapshot of how the US, if not the world, views the advent of AI and large language models. The Pew Research Center—which did similar probes during the rise of the internet, social media, and mobile devices—released a study of how ChatGPT was being used, regarded, and trusted. The sample was taken between February 7 and 11 of this year.

Some of the numbers at first seem to indicate that the LLM controversy might be a parochial disagreement that most people don’t care about. A third of Americans haven’t heard of ChatGPT. Just under a quarter have used it. Oh, and for all the panic about how AI is going to flood the public square with misinformation about the 2024 election? So far, only 2 percent of Americans have used ChatGPT to get information about the presidential election season already underway.

More broadly, though, data from the survey indicates that we’re seeing a powerful technology whose rise is just beginning. If you accept Pew’s sample as indicative of all Americans, millions of people are indeed familiar with ChatGPT. And one thing