Why it's time to reset our expectations for AI The hype we have been sold for the past few years has been overwhelming. Hype Correction is the antidote. Can I ask you a question: How do you about AI right now? Are you still excited? When you hear that OpenAI or Google just dropped a new model, do you still get that buzz? Or has the shine come off it, maybe just a teeny bit? Come on, you can be honest with me.

Three years after ChatGPT made OpenAI the leader in artificial intelligence and a household name, rivals have closed the gap and some investors are wondering if the sensation has the wherewithal to stay dominant. Investor Michael Burry, made famous in the film The Big Short, recently likened OpenAI to Netscape, which ruled the web-browser market in the mid-1990s only to lose to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. OpenAI is the next Netscape, doomed and hemorrhaging cash, Burry said recently in a post on X, formerly Twitter. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.

Hannah Wong told staff she is moving on to her “next chapter.” The company will be running an executive search to find a replacement, according to a memo.

The world's top chipmaker wants open source AI to succeed--perhaps because closed models increasingly run on its rivals' silicon. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang arrives for a meeting with lawmakers in Washington, DC. Nvidia has made a fortune supplying chips to companies working on artificial intelligence, but today the chipmaker took a step toward becoming a more serious model maker itself by releasing a series of cutting-edge open models, along with data and tools to help engineers use them. The move, which comes at a moment when AI companies like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are developing increasingly capable chips of their own, could be a hedge against these firms veering away from Nvidia's technology over time. Open models are already a crucial part of the AI ecosystem with many researchers and startups using them to experiment, prototype, and build.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. I thought AI would replace Photoshop. Here's why I still do it myself Now that the novelty of generative AI is wearing off, it's clear that there are some serious limitations. When ChatGPT first debuted, I thought my days as a writer were numbered. There are so many things it can do, and I imagine artists have had similar pangs of fearful panic as generative AI keeps getting ever better at creating lifelike and/or stylized images.

AI might not be coming for lawyers' jobs anytime soon Generative AI might have aced the bar exam, but an LLM still can't think like a lawyer. When the generative AI boom took off in 2022, Rudi Miller and her law school classmates were suddenly gripped with anxiety. "Before graduating, there was discussion about what the job market would look like for us if AI became adopted," she recalls. So when it came time to choose a speciality, Miller--now a junior associate at the law firm Orrick--decided to become a litigator, the kind of lawyer who represents clients in court. She hoped the courtroom would be the last human stage. "Judges haven't allowed ChatGPT-enabled robots to argue in court yet," she says.

Four ways to think about this year's reckoning When OpenAI released a free web app called ChatGPT in late 2022, it changed the course of an entire industry--and several world economies. Millions of people started talking to their computers, and their computers started talking back. We were enchanted, and we expected more. Technology companies scrambled to stay ahead, putting out rival products that outdid one another with each new release: voice, images, video. With nonstop one-upmanship, AI companies have presented each new product drop as a major breakthrough, reinforcing a widespread faith that this technology would just keep getting better. Boosters told us that progress was exponential.

What even is the AI bubble? Everyone in tech agrees we're in a bubble. They just can't agree on what it looks like -- or what happens when it pops. In July, a widely cited MIT study claimed that 95% of organizations that invested in generative AI were getting "zero return." While the study itself was more nuanced than the headlines, for many it still felt like the first hard data point confirming what skeptics had muttered for months: Hype around AI might be outpacing reality. Then, in August, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said what everyone in Silicon Valley had been whispering.

It's a seductive distraction from the advances in AI that are most likely to improve or even save your life On April 28, 2022, at a highly anticipated concert in Spokane, Washington, the musician Paul McCartney astonished his audience with a groundbreaking application of AI: He began to perform with a lifelike depiction of his long-deceased musical partner, John Lennon. Using recent advances in audio and video processing, engineers had taken the pair's final performance (London, 1969), separated Lennon's voice and image from the original mix and restored them with lifelike clarity. For years, researchers like me had taught machines to "see" and "hear" in order to make such a moment possible. As McCartney and Lennon appeared to reunite across time and space, the arena fell silent; many in the crowd began to cry. As an AI scientist and lifelong Beatles fan, I felt profound gratitude that we could experience this truly life-changing moment. Later that year, the world was captivated by another major breakthrough: AI conversation.

OpenAI turned 10 yesterday, and President Donald Trump incidentally gave the company a very special birthday gift: a sweeping executive order aiming to dismantle and preempt many state-level regulations of artificial intelligence. "There's only going to be one winner here, and it's probably going to be the U.S. or China," Trump said in a press conference announcing the order. And for the United States to win, "we have to be unified. Almost all of the AI industry's biggest players have been pushing for this move. OpenAI has been asking all year for the Trump administration to preempt state-level AI regulations, which the company believes would be burdensome in various ways; Microsoft, Google, Meta, Nvidia, and the major venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz have made similar requests.