GUEST ESSAY: Something wicked this way comes: ChatGPT, Artificial Intelligence's quantum leap

If you haven't had your head under a rock over the holiday season, you will know that an artificial intelligence (AI) software application called ChatGPT came tearing out of the gates of a company called OpenAI in December, a little over a month ago. There was almost no pre-launch advertising, but it took just one week to attract one million users, faster than any software launch in history, even those with $100-million advertising campaigns. Within its short life, ChatGPT has generated a library of heated controversy, a cesspool of Twitter insults and counter-insults, dire predictions about the end of humanity as we know it and breathless prose about a brave new world. What in the world is this thing, and what does it portend? The field of AI has burned quietly for decades, all the way back to the 1950s.