AI will be everywhere, but its rise will be mundane not apocalyptic

theguardian.com:

C heered by the news that OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, had released a free iPhone app for the language model, I went to the Apple app store to download it, only to find that it was nowhere to be found. This is because – as I belatedly discovered – it’s currently only available via the US app store and will be rolled out to other jurisdictions in due course. Despite that, though, the UK store was positively groaning with “ChatGPT” apps – of which I counted 25 before losing the will to live.

For example, there’s AI Chat – Chatbot AI Assistant (“Experience the power of AI! Create Essays, Emails, Resumes or Any Text!”). Or how about ChatGPro (“The Best AI Chat of 2023”)? Or Chat AI – Ask Open Chatbot (“The ultimate AI chat app that can assist you with anything and everything you need”)? Anything and everything, eh? And so on, ad infinitum. Interestingly, while the official OpenAI app is free, all of these cheery parasites, though free to download, require in-app purchases once you are enmeshed in their clutches. Same thing over in the Android universe, where something similar is under way, except that you find even more AI wannabes there than on the rarefied heights of the Apple store.

If anyone was looking for an example of a feeding frenzy, this is it. We’re beginning to see why, in 2016, Google’s boss Sundar Pichai was talking about “AI everywhere”. He may not have envisaged the hucksterish chaos currently reigning on the app stores, but at least he gets full marks for prescience. (Although it does make you wonder why his company was so taken aback when OpenAI – backed by Microsoft – launched ChatGPT last November.)

But then maybe even OpenAI was taken by surprise by what happened. After all, ChatGPT went from zero