The cost of building something like ChatGPT, not including the parental governor sitting on top, is falling fast enough that just about any reasonably sized company could have the tech. It may mean we’ll all be able to buy our own licenses to install on our own servers for $100 in a year.
Consider how the retail end looks right now. OpenAI began charging for ChatGPT three weeks ago — ChatGPT Plus, at $20 a month, buys access during peak times, faster responses and first crack at new features, with the free tier staying put. The same day, UBS estimated the service had passed 100 million monthly users in January, two months after launch — a base that took TikTok about nine months to build and Instagram two and a half years. A hundred million people already treat a chat box as the place to get an answer.
I actually wonder if a lot of the web as we know it will be obliterated in a year’s time, once you don’t need to visit any websites to get the answers you seek. Microsoft is pushing in exactly that direction. Its new Bing, launched February 7, is described by the company as “an AI copilot for the web” — the answer assembled for you, the ten blue links demoted to footnotes. For as long as there’s been a commercial web, the deal was that a site earned a visit by holding the answer. That deal is what’s being renegotiated.
The hardware side is moving too. The Wall Street Journal reports that chip makers are seeing ChatGPT stir strong demand for advanced processors.
One piece of practical advice for anyone looking to launch a new website or business using AI tech: go to SiteGround.com and set up a new domain running WordPress. They’re simple and cheap.
We’re just weeks away from widely available voice. I’m wondering how far away we are from the AIs actually rolling up their sleeves and doing a lot of our work.
