How ChatGPT changed the future

State of play: ChatGPT and similar tools have supercharged coding, helped us with rote workplace tasks, accelerated scientific discoveries, and inspired some teachers and health care providers.

• They have also raised alarm among many who fear they will eliminate jobs, usurp human decision-making and flatten culture.
• OpenAI did not invent generative AI. But it did force the rest of the tech world into a furious innovation race that critics fear has sidelined safety concerns.

Thought bubble, from Axios chief technology correspondent Ina Fried: ChatGPT has probably changed your life the most if you are a high school or college student, if you work in customer service or software development, or if you're trying to become a prolific poster on LinkedIn.

• For many of the rest of us, genAI is still largely in the novelty curiosity space, despite the giddy prophecies and billions invested.

Case in point: Almost since its launch, ChatGPT vexed K-12 teachers and college professors. Fears of widespread cheating caused schools to ban the technology instead of figuring out how to use it in the classroom.

• Tools promising to detect ChatGPT cheating have been largely ineffective, and have further stoked mistrust between educators and their students by falsely flagging original content as AI-generated.
• Ed tech startups were quick to capitalize on the hype and create genAI tools, achieving mixed results and inspiring skepticism.
• While students are regularly using genAI, teachers are not. Education Week recently found that educators' use of artificial intelligence tools in the classroom has barely changed in the last year.

GenAI is also beginning to change health care — albeit slowly, due to inherent risks and general mistrust.

• OpenAI says ChatGPT should not be used as a tool to diagnose health problems. But many have used it with more success than querying their human doctors or Dr. Google.
• A recent small study found ChatGPT Plus beat doctors at diagnosing illnesses and also beat doctors who diagnosed with the help of ChatGPT.
• "It unveiled doctors' sometimes unwavering belief in a diagnosis they made, even when a chatbot potentially suggests a better one," The New York Times notes.

For those who embrace the tools, ChatGPT and similar chatbots are beginning to change human relationships.

• Parents are using the bots to help raise their children. Chatbots can create chore charts with age-appropriate tasks, plan elaborate birthday parties and help script "the sex talk."

• As dating apps struggle to stay relevant, one startup called Rizz uses genAI to offer daters a virtual Cyrano, helping craft responses to potential partners.
• Although they're still niche, AI companions are upending the relationship world, as users rely on them for role-playing, NSFW chats, friendship and even love. The apps are particularly popular — and problematic — for teens.

Yes, but: Whether the majority of people regularly use chatbots or not (and some new studies of specific groups, like U.S. workers, say that they aren't), generative AI is now embedded in our vision of the future — along with our fears of it.

• According to a March YouGov survey of around 1,000 adults, 54% of people say they are "cautious" of AI. Nearly half (49%) are "concerned," 40% say they are "skeptical," and 22% are "scared."
• Earlier this year, Miram Vogel, chair of the National AI Advisory Committee, told Axios that the vast majority of people are still afraid to use AI.

What's next: Whether generative AI's hot market thrives or goes bust, the changes ChatGPT has begun to unleash — within technology itself, in virtually every field of work and all across society — are likely to accelerate.

• Two years of living with ChatGPT still haven't shown us the perfect use case for generative AI. But they have proven the technology's allure — and that will drive the industry to keep looking till it finds a killer app.