ChatGPT turns 3, and it has changed how people look things up

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On November 30th, 2022, OpenAI quietly dropped a little experiment onto the internet, “a model called ChatGPT which interacts in a conversational way.” 

Cute. Understated. Like announcing a “small meteor” headed toward Earth. 

Within months, the chatbot had rewritten tech, business, and dinner-table arguments everywhere. It’s still sitting at the top of Apple’s free app charts, lording over the App Store like a smug digital mall Santa.

ChatGPT didn’t just go viral. It detonated an entire industry. 

Generative AI tools began multiplying like gremlins fed after midnight, and suddenly everyone was wondering whether the em dash would survive the robot uprising.

Some observers say we’re living in a new geopolitical era shaped by one company. 

Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI, told TechCrunch that OpenAI is now “more powerful than pretty much any nation-state,” and is busy “rewiring our geopolitics, all of our lives.” No big deal.

Others, like The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel, say we’re stuck in “the world ChatGPT built,” a vibe he describes as perpetual pre–shoe drop. 

For young people entering the workforce, the future is a maze of question marks. 

For older generations, it’s a reminder that the skills they spent decades sharpening might suddenly be the workplace equivalent of floppy disks.

To be fair, plenty of AI optimists are cheering from the sidelines, while also bracing for whatever comes next. 

Even the biggest boosters admit generative AI is basically a cosmic draft that’s constantly being rewritten. No “final version,” just endless updates and the occasional existential meltdown.

Meanwhile, Wall Street is having the time of its life. Nvidia has seen its stock skyrocket 979% since ChatGPT’s launch. 

Big Tech as a whole is riding the wave: the seven most valuable companies in the S&P 500 now make up a whopping 35% of the index. That concentrated? Yes. That sustainable? Eh.

Even AI executives are whispering the B-word (bubble). OpenAI CEO Sam Altman predicted that “someone is going to lose a phenomenal amount of money in AI.” 

Sierra CEO and OpenAI board chair Bret Taylor compared the moment to the dot-com boom, messy, chaotic, and potentially transformative.

Give it three years, maybe less, and we’ll know whether this was the dawn of a new era… or just another very expensive hype cycle.