This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
The Key That Unlocked It All: Language
In the years I spent perfecting my craft, artificial intelligence (AI) remained mostly a behind-the-scenes tool, something that intrigued technologists but hadn’t yet captured the world’s imagination. Then, on November 30, 2022, everything changed. Upon its release, ChatGPT became the fastest-growing platform in history, reaching 1 million users in just five days and sparking a global conversation about AI in a way I had never seen before.
For those of us already in the field, ChatGPT’s capabilities weren’t entirely new. We had seen previous versions like GPT-2 and GPT-3. By the time ChatGPT launched, its underlying language model, GPT-3.5, had become something of a well-kept secret among tech insiders. But this wasn’t just another incremental technological leap: It was a breakthrough in how humans and machines could interact.
What set ChatGPT apart wasn’t simply the advancement from one model to the next. Instead, the true innovation lay in its conversational interface. Until then, most AI models had worked quietly behind the scenes, enhancing efficiency or making predictions with minimal human input. They reminded me of the Internet in its early, read-only phase, when we would patiently wait for pages to load and passively absorb information that others had created. Back then, the Internet felt like a vast but inert resource—useful, but not interactive (Figure 1.1). It wasn’t until social media sparked the read–write revolution that the Internet truly became an integral part of daily life.
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FIGURE 1.1 From the Information Age to the Intelligence Age
AI has followed a similar path. Once people could interact with AI through a simple chat interface, a new world of possibilities emerged. For those of us who had nurtured this technology, it felt like watching a child speak its first words. AI had grown from an extraordinary but detached tool into something capable of calling our names, interacting with us, and engaging us in an entirely new way.
For the first time, we had a tool that allowed us to communicate with AI in our most human way: through language. This was a milestone as profound as early humans discovering fire or creating the wheel, a leap that felt both practical and deeply symbolic.
Like many others, I began my new relationship with AI by asking simple questions, wanting to understand its knowledge, see its gaps, and recognize its limitations. I often emerged from my office brimming with excitement, eager to share what I had learned or accomplished through these exchanges with colleagues and friends. It quickly became clear: The way we work is changing, and in my view, it’s changing for the better.
