Overview

• Artificial intelligence (AI) went mainstream in 2023, with ChatGPT, a chatbot, leading the way and giving the world a glimpse of recent advances in computer science.
• The first AI panic of 2023 occurred when schools started blocking ChatGPT after teenagers began using it to compose essays and answer take-home tests.
• AI's unchecked progress led to concerns about it outsmarting humans and possibly threatening their existence, while others called these concerns overblown and highlighted more immediate risks.
• By the end of the year, AI crises had shifted to ChatGPT's maker, OpenAI, which was nearly destroyed by corporate turmoil, and to a government meeting room in Belgium, where a deal for the world's first major AI legal safeguards was agreed upon.
• The dangers of AI could escalate in 2024, as major national elections could be flooded with AI-generated deepfakes.