news/GOOG/2023.01.17/Davos 2023: CEOs buzz about ChatGPT-style AI at World Economic Forum.txt

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Business titans
trudging through Alpine snow can't stop talking about a chatbot
from San Francisco.Generative artificial intelligence, tech that can invent
virtually any content someone can think up and type into a text
box, is garnering not just venture investment in Silicon Valley
but interest in Davos at the World Economic Forum's annual
meeting this week.Defining the category is ChatGPT, a chatbot that the startup
called OpenAI released in November. The tech works by learning
from vast amounts of data how to answer any prompt by a user in
a human-like way, offering information like a search engine
would or prose like an aspiring novelist.Executives have floated wide-ranging applications for the
nascent technology, from use as a programming assistant to a
step forward in the global race for AI and military supremacy.Conference goers with a major stake in the development of
the technology include Microsoft Corp, whose chief
executive, Satya Nadella, said the tech's progress has not been
linear.AI capabilities will "completely transform" all of
Microsoft's products, he said in an on-stage interview with the
Wall Street Journal.Microsoft has a $1 billion investment in San Francisco-based
OpenAI that it has looked at increasing, Reuters has reported.
In an announcement that coincided with the conference, Microsoft
said it plans to market ChatGPT to its cloud-computing
customers. The company has also worked to add OpenAI's
image-generation software to its Bing search engine in a new
challenge to Alphabet Inc's Google.Later on Tuesday, the political sphere gets to weigh in on
the craze. French politician Jean-Noël Barrot planned to join a
panel discussion with a Sony Group Corp executive on
the technology's impact.Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare Inc, a company
that defends websites against cyberattacks and offers other
cloud services, sees generative AI as good enough to be a junior
programmer or a "really good thought partner."In an interview, Prince said Cloudflare was using such
technology to write code on its Workers platform. Cloudflare is
also exploring how such tech can answer inquiries faster for its
free-tier customers as well, he said on the annual meeting's
sidelines.Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies Inc, a
software provider helping governments visualise an army's
movements or enterprises vet their supply chains, among other
tasks, said such AI could have military applications.Karp told Reuters in Davos, "The idea that an autonomous
thing could generate results is basically obviously useful for
war."The country that advances the fastest in AI capabilities is
"going to define the law of the land," Karp said, adding that it
was worth asking how tech would play a role in any conflict with
China.Businesses including CarMax Inc have already used
Microsoft and OpenAI's tech, such as to generate thousands of
customer review summaries when marketing used vehicles. Proposed
venture-capital investment has also exceeded what some startups
want to take.Such buzz carried through gatherings at Davos, like talk
about a slide-generating bot dubbed ChatBCG after the management
consulting firm. The service said on its website that it had too
much demand to keep operating.Generative AI is "a game-changer that society and industry
need to be ready for," stated an article on the World Economic
Forum's website.
(Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin in Davos, Switzerland; Editing by
Kenneth Li and Gerry Doyle)