ChatGPT and Large Language Models

OpenAI's ChatGPT, launched in November 2022, became the fastest-growing consumer application in history and triggered an AI arms race. LLMs raised unprecedented concerns about academic integrity, job displacement, copyright infringement (trained on the internet without consent), deepfakes, and the potential for artificial general intelligence. Italy temporarily banned ChatGPT; the EU passed the AI Act; and the debate about whether AI will save or destroy humanity became the defining technological controversy of the 2020s.