Earlier this week, news emerged about the Department of Justice's efforts to end Google's dominance in internet search, specifically aiming to prevent Google from leveraging its monopoly to influence AI development. This prompted us to reflect. It's been nearly two years since OpenAI's ChatGPT was launched. In that time, how has AI advanced, particularly amidst all the hype, restrictions, and dire warnings about AI's potential dangers?How widely are people and businesses actually using AI now? Interestingly, Google has introduced a relatively new AI product called NotebookLM, which can transform any input into a podcast. Economist Anton Korinek from the University of Virginia frequently uses it, primarily to summarize dense research papers. “I sometimes do that now because honestly those voices are engaging, it’s so well done, and quite impressive, ” he mentioned. NotebookLM represents just one of the significant strides AI has taken in the past two years, with generative AI becoming less prone to fabrications.

Yet, AI adoption isn't progressing as quickly as Korinek anticipated. “There is this almost free tool that’s extremely powerful and it’s like $100 bills lying on the floor and nobody’s picking them up, ” he noted. Encouraging businesses to seize these opportunities is part of Shane Cumming's role. As president of Acrolinx, a company providing AI content standard services, Cummings explained that while tech and finance sectors have embraced AI early, others remain cautious. “One thing that hasn’t changed in the last two years is that enterprises are accountable for the content they produce—legally, ethically, and financially, ” he explained. Nonetheless, a recent study, co-authored by Vanderbilt University economist Adam Blandin, found that approximately 40% of the U. S. working-age population utilizes generative AI in some capacity. Blandin remarked that the initial spread of AI echoes the pace of past tech revolutions. “Our overall adoption rate among workers looks very similar to the overall adoption rate of computers in 1984. For perspective, the IBM PC was released in 1981, ” he said. He added that there might be more AI use in workplaces than currently acknowledged, suggesting it could take a few years before employees feel comfortable openly admitting they used ChatGPT for tasks like creating PowerPoint presentations.