I was reading an article about the Apple VR Headset when I saw this quote from Casey Newton about AI.  It puts into context how quickly we have come to use AI as Americans

“One of the great gifts of the AI mania of the past six months is that it has shown us, clear as day, what it looks like when consumers actually get excited about something. ChatGPT is a product people bring up to me in everyday life before they even find out I’m a tech reporter; roughly seven months after launch, 12 percent of Americans have already used it for work. There’s something deeply funny about the fact that, after billions of dollars spent hyping up VR and crypto, the product that actually captivated the world’s attention again was a text box.”

Apple’s three-thousand-dollar virtual headset may be a big hit, but it will likely take a few years.

We’ve had crypto and Facebook’s metaverse, both of which received a lot of hype and media coverage.

However, Americans never seemed to get excited about them. I would guess that most people never used them.

On the other hand, it would be hard not to be part of an AI discussion and feel intrigued to try using ChatGPT. 

Pew Research found that 12 percent of workers have used AI on the job. I would guess the number is even higher in the legal field.

Americans are excited about something, and it’s delivered by something as simple as a text box.