OpenAI Blazes A Trail

ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chat tool created by OpenAI, burst onto the scene only a month ago in December 2022 when the service accumulated a few million subscribers in days.

Artificial intelligence has always been tabbed as the future – the future is now here.

Damn straight, and about time!

ChatGPT is a program that is able to carry on a text-based conversation by generating answers and replies using its artificial algorithm.

In many cases, the answers and replies seem so natural that it is almost impossible to differentiate between a real human and a piece of code.

This software is a game changer.

The piece of technology went viral only last month when its free version launched and students were the first to figure out its usefulness.

December 2022 could be looked back upon as the AHA moment when American students finally stopped needing to ever write essays and that’s exactly what has happened.

Then there is the question of why students securing degrees in fields like art history, language, or any humanity field need to go to school at all.

OpenAI has now rendered American universities worthless.

Aside from specific specialty fields like science, technology, and engineering, the case for students paying a bajillion dollars per year to attend some glorified adult day care center is marginal.

Technology has now democratized knowledge.

It’s not that surprising a big tech company would swoop in to take advantage - Microsoft and their CEO Satya Nadella are in talks with OpenAI to invest $10 billion in ChatGPT-owner OpenAI as part of funding that will value the firm at $29 billion.

Hard to understand why Apple or Meta isn’t in the running.

Microsoft will also get 75% of OpenAI's profits until it recoups its initial investment.

OpenAI expects $200 million in revenue next year and $1 billion by 2024.

OpenAI charges developers licensing its technology about a penny or a little more to generate 20,000 words of text, and about 2 cents to create an image from a written prompt.

This could be the beginning of a foray into intense competition with Google’s search engine by Microsoft’s Bing.

Bing has been deadweight for many years and I hardly know anyone who actually uses it.

The effectiveness of Bing search is mediocre at best and Google search has always been the best in class.

I believe that Microsoft will unleash ChatGPT to skew future content towards its Bing search engine.

If one opens Google Maps on a different browser, it hardly works.

I expect some sort of similar correlation with Microsoft Bing that ties ChatGPT-based content with the Microsoft Bing browser.

Then there is the ChatGPT foreign language potential which could potentially usurp Google Translate in the future simply because it becomes better than Google Translate.  

Google translate has cornered the foreign language translation market in a browser market and that could easily be reversed with ChatGPT once it starts integrating with many foreign languages.

I am surprised Google let this one get away because they are directly threatened by it and Google’s acceleration is decelerating.

Microsoft is clearly a winner from this investment and I can expect for its Bing search engine to slowly steal market share from Google search as it integrates ChatGPT into its in-house browser. The American university system is clearly a loser here with most college degrees not worth the ink the diplomas are written on. Don’t waste money on obsolete education.

Buy Microsoft shares on the dip.