The genie escapes: Stanford copies the ChatGPT AI for less than $600

Six months ago, only researchers and boffins were following the development of large language models. But ChatGPT's launch late last year sent a rocket up humanity's backside: machines are now able to communicate in a way pretty much indistinguishable from humans. They're able to write text and even programming code across a dizzying array of subject areas in seconds, often of a very high standard. They're improving at a meteoric rate, as the launch of GPT-4 illustrates, and they stand to fundamentally transform human society like few other technologies could, by potentially automating a range of job tasks – particularly among white-collar workers – people might previously have thought of as impossible. Many other companies – notably Google, Apple, Meta, Baidu and Amazon, among others – are not too far behind, and their AIs will soon be flooding into the market, attached to every possible application and device.