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By Jeffrey Dustin
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – Business titans walking through alpine snow can’t stop talking about a chatbot from San Francisco.
Generative artificial intelligence, the technology that can create any content a person can think of and type into a text box, is gaining interest not only in Silicon Valley but also at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos this week.
Defining the category is ChatGPT, a startup called OpenAI that was released in November. The technology works by learning from large amounts of data how to answer any user question in a human-like way, providing information like a search engine or search fiction.
Executives have floated a wide range of applications for the fledgling technology, from use as a programming assistant to a step forward in the global race for AI and military dominance.
Conference attendees with a big stake in the technology’s development include Microsoft Corp., whose CEO Satya Nadella is taking the stage in Davos on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Microsoft has invested $1 billion in San Francisco-based OpenAI, Reuters reported. In an announcement related to the conference, Microsoft announced plans to market ChatGipt to its cloud computing customers.
On Tuesday, the political sphere weighed in on the madness. French politician Jean-Noel Barot plans to join a panel discussion with a Sony Group Corp executive on the technology’s impact.
Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare Inc., which protects websites from cyberattacks and provides other cloud services, sees Generative AI as a junior programmer or “really good idea partner.”
In an interview, Prince Cloudflare said he was using such technology to write code on a staff platform. Cloudflare is also exploring how such technology can quickly answer questions for its free-tier customers, he said at the annual meeting.
Such AI could have military applications, among other functions, said Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies Inc., a software provider that helps governments verify the movements of the military or enterprises in their supply chains.
“The idea that something autonomous can produce results is fundamentally useful for war,” Karp told Reuters in Davos.
A country that is making rapid progress in AI capabilities is “about to define the law of the land,” Karp said, adding that it is appropriate to ask how technology will play a role in a conflict with China.
Businesses including CarMax Inc have already used Microsoft and OpenAI’s technology, for example, to generate thousands of customer review summaries when marketing used vehicles. The proposed venture-capital investment is more than some startups are willing to take.
Such buzz has taken place at meetings in Davos, such as talking about a slide-generating bot named ChatBCG after a management consulting firm. The service announced on its website that there was too much demand to continue operating.
Generative AI is “a game-changer that society and industry must be ready for,” says an article on the World Economic Forum’s website.
(Reporting by Jeffrey Dustin in Davos, Switzerland; Editing by Kenneth Lee and Jerry Doyle)
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