OpenAI is a research institute and for-profit company founded in 2015 by a group of high-profile entrepreneurs, researchers, and philanthropists, including Elon Musk, CEO Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and more. 

The organization's stated goal is to advance and promote friendly artificial intelligence (AI) responsibly, with the long-term aim of benefiting humanity as a whole.

OpenAI was initially funded through a combination of private donations and investment from a variety of individual sources and the charitable organization the Open Philanthropy Project. 

In 2016, the company received a significant injection of funding from Microsoft, which became a strategic partner and helped to accelerate the organization's research efforts.

OpenAI has also played a leading role in shaping the broader discourse around AI. The organization frequently hosts conferences, workshops, and other events focused on the ethical and social implications of AI, and has regularly engaged with policymakers, academics, and other stakeholders to discuss the future of the field.

A key area of focus for OpenAI is the development of "deep learning" algorithms, which are a type of machine learning algorithm that can learn and make decisions based on large amounts of data. 

Deep learning algorithms have been used to achieve impressive results in a wide range of applications, including image and speech recognition, language translation, and autonomous vehicles.

Since inception, OpenAI has made several significant contributions to the field of AI. 

In 2015, the organization released an AI system called "DQN," which was able to play Atari 2600 games at a superhuman level. The following year, OpenAI released "GPT," a natural language processing model that was able to generate human-like text based on a given prompt. In 2018, the company released "GPT-2," an updated version of the model that was able to generate even more realistic and coherent text. 

In recent years, OpenAI has also focused on the development of AI systems that can interact with and understand humans in more natural and intuitive ways. This has included the development of chatbots that can hold conversational exchanges with users and assistive technologies that can help people with disabilities perform tasks more easily.

These advancements culminated a few weeks ago when OpenAI released its ChatGPT service to the public, taking the internet by storm and amassing over one million users in just under six days. 

For reference, here’s how long it took other popular platforms to reach one million users: 

ChatGPT: The Google Killer

With the launch of ChatGPT, anyone with an internet connection can see first-hand how powerful the platform is. 

It’s extremely simple to set up and start using, all you have to do is sign up for an account and start asking it questions by sending prompts.

You can find the website by clicking here. 

Once you’re signed up, you should see the site open up to look like this: 

You can ask the AI everything from simple questions about science, history, math, code, and really anything you can think of. Not only that, but it will provide you answers to the best of its ability in only a few seconds. 

In its current state, a major implication for this is the ability to research topics free from ads like you would find on Google. While still in its infancy, the AI will continue to learn and grow as it gathers more information. 

The better the platform becomes at answering complex questions and assisting productivity, the more it rivals services like Google, Bing, and others.

For example, take a look at something I asked it today when writing this update: 

While pretty basic info, it’s incredible that this platform was able to provide such a detailed answer in only a few seconds. If you were using Google for the same question, you’d likely have to spend much more time sorting through info to reach the same destination. 

Now, here’s the kicker… For the opening portion of this update that included the history of OpenAI and its work in the field, I used ChatGPT to write the majority of that information! 

I didn’t have to do much editing either, besides a bit of rearrangement, those few paragraphs came directly from an AI. 

That’s pretty impressive stuff! 

Ultimately, this platform still has some difficulty with the subtle nuance of human speech and writing, but the fact that it can write multiple paragraphs on a topic in the blink of an eye holds incredible promise. 

I’m definitely looking forward to what becomes capable with the platform that OpenAI is developing.