AI kingpins have global rulemakers over a barrel

By Dave Lee

AS OpenAI founder Sam Altman bounced around Europe meeting political leaders last week, his revolutionary technology was never far behind. ChatGPT on iPhone, which launched in the US in May, arrived in the UK, France, Germany and eight other countries. It almost immediately became the most-downloaded productivity app in the Apple store.

The aggressive push from OpenAI to get its technology into as many places as possible – business, education, personal lives – has been unprecedented, wildly expensive, and tremendously successful. In a Deutsche Bank survey of 1,150 employees across sectors, 44 per cent of US workers in April said ChatGPT was being used, if only tentatively, in their workplaces, and 22 per cent said ChatGPT use was already “heavy”; in the UK, 14 per cent of respondents said the same.