Utopian or dystopian? CEOs are split on what ChatGPT means for their business

I got some pushback last December when I wrote that ChatGPT was the most important news story of 2022. After all, it was a big year for news: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine upended the world economic and geopolitical order.

But three months later, my prediction holds up pretty well. The world is reeling as people contemplate the implications of this new technology. And I’m not just talking about the fact that the wily chatbot tried to separate Kevin Roose from his wife. (If you missed that one, see here.) Utopian and dystopian scenarios abound. Consider yesterday’s news: 

—Bank of America said the “adoption rate of this technology so far is unprecedented,” putting us on the verge of another “iPhone moment,” and predicted the economic impact would be $15.7 trillion by 2030. That’s trillion, folks.

—Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he would create a new “based” A.I. to counter what he says is increasingly “woke” A.I., leading Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, to conjure up “the idea of a fragmented A.I. universe, like we have a fragmented social media or network news universe. I think that’s bad for all of us.” Amen.

–Closer to home, the CEO of media company Axel Springer, Mathias Döpfner, said he foresees disruption to media as big as the disruption that the internet caused for newspapers, and provided this mind-spinning quote: “Artificial intelligence has the potential to make independent journalism better than it ever was—or simply replace it.” Huh?

I spoke yesterday with former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, who said the introduction of ChatGPT “is a perfect example of why we have to introduce these technologies in a way that creates trust in them. We all have a responsibility to manage the upsides and the downsides.” But that’s easier said than done at a time when velocity of technological change is so much faster than the speed at which people and society can adapt.

More news below. By the way, I spoke to Rometty because she has a book coming out next week. More on that Monday.

Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com

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AROUND THE WATERCOOLER

Salesforce has disbanded the board’s mergers and acquisitions committee, an abrupt sign that Marc Benioff’s string of multi-billion deals is finished by Kylie Robison

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The A.I. revolution is here. Here’s how leaders can prepare employees for the new workforce by Paige McGlauflin

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This edition of CEO Daily was edited by Jackson Fordyce.