The Inflection Era · Industry · 2022
ChatGPT
The chatbot that made a billion people realize AI had quietly become capable.
ChatGPT launched on November 30, 2022, as a free research preview from OpenAI. Built on top of GPT-3.5, a model in the GPT-4 lineage trained on vast quantities of internet text, it was fine-tuned using a technique called Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) — the same approach OpenAI had refined through its InstructGPT work published earlier that year. The interface was deliberately simple: a text box, a conversation thread, and a model that responded in fluent, coherent prose on almost any topic.
ChatGPT marked the moment artificial intelligence transitioned from a specialist research domain into a subject of general public concern, debate, and daily use. Before November 2022, most discussions of AI capability happened in research labs, academic conferences, and technology journalism. After it, questions about AI's ability to write, reason, deceive, replace workers, and transform education became mainstream political and cultural conversations. Regulatory bodies in the European Union, the United States Congress, and governments worldwide began drafting AI-specific legislation with a new urgency directly traceable to ChatGPT's visibility.