OpenAI offered ChatGPT to the world. A large, monied cross-section of the world had yet to throw its capital behind the Large Language Model technology that made the ChatBot possible. While it is fair to see AI development now as a global imposition, OpenAI did not have the agency as a 2022 startup to impose on the scale we see now.
I think "imposed" is a pretty fair word. LLMs already affect everyone's lives whether you use them or not and their footprint is still growing. It's like I don't have to buy a car, but cars are absolutely imposed on everyone anyway.
I asked Mistral, and it guestimated that Altman, Thiel, Musk, and Hoffman had like $20.3B together when they founded it. Sound to me that the founding of OpenAI was exactly the point when the monied world threw its dollars behind AI.
OpenAI offered ChatGPT to the world. A large, monied cross-section of the world had yet to throw its capital behind the Large Language Model technology that made the ChatBot possible. While it is fair to see AI development now as a global imposition, OpenAI did not have the agency as a 2022 startup to impose on the scale we see now.