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Critics see this type of artificial intelligence as little more than "stochastic parrots" that put together words and sentences according to statistical probabilities. AI evangelists, on the other hand, champion ChatGPT as the first big step towards a true "Artificial General Intelligence" that could exhibit the same cognitive abilities as a human. Companies and investors aren't afraid to spend big to accelerate this development.
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Thanks to a record-breaking $40-billion funding round announced by OpenAI on March 31, VC-backed companies based in the U.S. raised $80 billion in the first quarter of 2025. That’s the highest total for venture capital investment in the U.S. since Q1 2022 and more than double the amount invested in Q1 2024. While that’s sounds great on paper, VC investment was on track to fall quarter-over-quarter and wouldn’t have looked nearly as impressive without OpenAI’s latest mega round.
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The rapid adoption of AI has stirred up worry - or at least apprehension - among many workers, as it is still unknown exactly what the impacts of the technology will be. Some of this worry could be misaligned, as new survey data from Pew Recenter Right shows, with a gap in understanding over which jobs are most at risk having grown between the general public and AI experts.
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