OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a slow, buggy, boring-looking chat bot that frequently makes things up and cuts off in the middle of answers. But it communicates as well or better than most humans, and writes code as well. It does both in a range of languages, showing some extraordinary insight and creativity at times. It learns at a pace the world has never seen before, and it can do an extraordinary (and rapidly expanding) range of tasks already, that nobody ever specifically taught it how to do. It can do these tasks in a fraction of the time a human would take, for next to no cost.

It’s an ominous preview of a looming tidal wave of AI systems set to launch in the coming months and years, each becoming smarter, faster, more capable and more integrated with our lives and our devices. GPT-4’s staggering abilities as an “anything machine” will look incredibly crude in a year or two.

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Read more: New Atlas