Generative AI Still Needs to Prove Its Usefulness

Generative AI took the world by storm in November 2022, with the release of OpenAI’s service ChatGPT. There is just one thing: Generative AI doesn’t actually work that well, and maybe it never will. Fundamentally, the engine of generative AI is fill-in-the-blanks, or what I like to call “autocomplete on steroids.” Such systems are great at predicting what might sound good or plausible in a given context, but not at understanding at a deeper level what they are saying; an AI is constitutionally incapable of fact-checking its own work. The profits aren’t there—estimates suggest that OpenAI’s 2024 operating loss may be $5 billion—and the valuation of more than $80 billion doesn’t line up with the lack of profits.