This has been a crazy, breakout year for artificial intelligence, which became the hot topic for discussion in almost every corporate boardroom. More than 100mn users experimented with OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot and other text and image generation services, churning out countless school essays, personalised marketing pitches and viral fake images, including the Pope in a puffer jacket.
The British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak took a break from grappling with hospital waiting times and migrant boats to host a two-day conference at Bletchley Park to explore the technology’s existential risks. And the San Francisco start-up OpenAI succumbed to a bitter, and somewhat bizarre, boardroom row in which chief executive Sam Altman was fired and then rehired a few days later after a staff revolt.