Introducing the Intelligence Age

The wheel, the plow. The compass, the telescope. The train, the car, the plane. The light bulb, the telephone, the internet, the smartphone. And so many others. All innovations created or harnessed by humans, for humans—used as tools to explore, discover, and create better lives for ourselves, our families and others. All progress has a starting point.

Artificial intelligence is the most powerful tool humans have ever invented. In just over two years, more than 300 million people around the world have used ChatGPT’s freely available intelligence to ideate, discover, and break through beyond what we’re currently capable of doing on our own; in January, one in seven American adults used ChatGPT.¹ Most of our users—nearly eight in 10—are under the age of 35.² California State University is making ChatGPT available to half a million students⁠(opens in a new window). “The young people who are busy imagining and shaping the future are using AI to do it,” our Chief Marketing Officer Kate Rouch likes to say. “The only question is what they’ll use the tool to create, and what problems they’ll use it to solve.”

Economic research indicates that technologies usually take decades to diffuse across the world. More recently, digital platforms that have come before ChatGPT took between about 10 years (Netflix) and close to one year (Fortnite) to reach 100 million users. ChatGPT hit that milestone in two months, ushering in a new paradigm for the pace of technological progress.³

OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that as AI advances and becomes able to solve harder and harder problems, what’s called artificial general intelligence (AGI), it benefits everyone. As our CEO Sam Altman has written⁠(opens in a new window), it won’t happen all at once, but we’ll soon be able to work with AI that helps us accomplish much more than we ever could without it. That starts with the tool getting into the hands of as many people as possible by being not just accessible but inspiring.