Harlan Stewart, 23 February 2023
Introduction
Public consideration towards AI appears a lot greater after the discharge of ChatGPT on the finish of November. However how a lot greater is it? To raised perceive this, I checked out search information from Google Developments about ChatGPT, OpenAI, AI, and AI Alignment. Sadly, Google Developments solely shares relative search volumes as a substitute of the variety of searches made for a time period or matter. I in contrast these relative search volumes to different non-AI subjects, corresponding to Taylor Swift, to make them extra helpful. That is just like including a well-recognized “for scale” object in a product photograph.
Learn how to learn these graphs
- Within the first graph, the information is about searches for the phrases in citation marks, that are precise search phrases. Within the others, the information is about search “subjects,” that are collections of varied search phrases associated to a subject, as outlined by Google Developments.
- The vertical axes of those graphs are relative search quantity, outlined as the proportion of the height search quantity in that graph.
Information
ChatGPT is mainstream
For the time that ChatGPT has been publicly out there since November 30 2022, US searches for it outnumbered US searches for Taylor Swift or Drake. Nonetheless, there have been solely round a 3rd as many searches for ChatGPT as searches for Wordle, and Wordle itself had solely round a 3rd of the search quantity that it did in Spring 2022.
People all of the sudden find out about OpenAI
For the time that OpenAI has existed, since December 10 2015, People normally looked for it lower than for Blockbuster Video, a retailer that closed in 2014. Within the months since ChatGPT was introduced, American searches for OpenAI have elevated by round 15x to a quantity just like that for Samsung.
Curiosity in AI developed from dinosaurs to birds
For many of the final decade, there was the same variety of world searches about AI as about dinosaurs. Within the time since DALL-E 2’s beta was introduced lower than a 12 months in the past, world searches about AI have roughly tripled, rising to a quantity of worldwide searches just like that about birds.
Alignment curiosity is at an all-time excessive however nonetheless fairly low
During the last 10 years, world searches about AI alignment have risen from “digital scent expertise” stage to “colonization of the moon” stage and presumably past. Searches about AI alignment appear to have roughly quadrupled within the final two years. Eyeballing this graph, it’s unclear to me whether or not the bulletins of DALL-E 2 or ChatGPT had any vital impact on search quantity.
Dialogue
ChatGPT is receiving mainstream consideration. Though I’ve not performed any statistical evaluation of those developments, it seems to me that the recognition of ChatGPT can also be driving curiosity in each OpenAI as an organization and AI generally. Curiosity in alignment can also be on the rise however nonetheless about as obscure an curiosity as colonization of the moon.
It’s unclear whether or not curiosity in AI will proceed to develop, plateau, or drop again to earlier ranges. This may probably depend upon what near-term future progress in AI will seem like. In case you anticipate that AI-related information as fascinating as ChatGPT will probably be uncommon, you may anticipate curiosity to say no because the hype fizzles out. In case you anticipate that the tempo of fascinating AI developments will proceed at its present quick fee, you may anticipate curiosity in AI to proceed to develop, maybe changing into much more standard than birds.