Erik Brynjolfsson is in great demand. The US professor whose research focuses on the relationship between digital tech and human productivity is nearing the end of a European speaking tour that's lasted nearly a month. Speaking via Zoom as he prepares for his imminent lecture in Oxford, the director of the Digital Economy Lab at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI is enthused by recent "seminal breakthroughs" in the field. Brynjolfsson's tour – which has included appearances at the World Economic Forum in Davos and the Institute for the Future of Work in London – is neatly timed, because the recent arrival of ChatGPT on the scene has been capturing human minds, if not yet hearts. The large-scale language model, fed 300 billion words by developer OpenAI, caused a sensation with its powerful capabilities, attracting 1 million users within five days of its release in late November 2022.

A little over a year has passed since Timnit Gebru was fired from Google. The 38-year old Ethiopian-American researcher and former co-lead of the company's Ethical AI unit, believes she was pushed out for working on an academic paper that raised red flags about using large language models in Google's quest to develop "superintelligent" AI systems. The research highlighted the ways AI can misinterpret language on the internet, which can lead to "stereotyping, denigration, increases in extremist ideology, and wrongful arrest," as Gebru and her co-authors put it. Tired of tussling with the internal politics of mega corporations, Gebru has struck out on her own. She recently launched an independent practice called Distributed AI Research Institute or DAIR--a homonym for "dare"--with funding from the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Kapor Center, the Open Society Foundations and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Even though the history of chatbots goes back into the 1960s, chatbots are one of the latest developments in technology that all businesses should consider using. When properly implemented, chatbots can help to improve employee engagement, as well as customer experience. Yet, many businesses are still unable to fully reap the benefits of this technology, partly due to a number of common chatbot myths. Here we debunk six popular chatbot myths. One of the biggest misconceptions is the notion that chatbots are only applicable to specific industries, most commonly, that they only deliver results in customer service sectors.

When you think about service robots, what comes to mind? Maybe you think about that little CGI trash-compacting robot that was all alone cleaning up a future, wasted earth. Or maybe you think about a faraway robot rover scouring the surface of Mars, searching for signs of life. Perhaps you recently saw a robot your local grocery store mopping up spills. There are plenty of misconceptions about the nature of service robots.

Apoorv Saxena, lead product manager at Google and co-founder of the AI Frontiers conference that will be held in Santa Clara, Calif., from November 3-5, speaks with Knowledge@Wharton about why interest in artificial intelligence is growing, what is likely to happen in the near future and which challenges will take longer to overcome. An edited transcript of the conversation follows. Knowledge@Wharton: Interest in artificial intelligence has picked up dramatically in recent times. What is driving this hype? What are some of the biggest prevailing misconceptions about AI and how would you separate the hype from reality? Apoorv Saxena: There are multiple factors driving strong interest in AI recently. First is significant gains in dealing with long-standing problems in AI.