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The future of generative AI is niche, not generalized

The relentless hype surrounding generative AI in the past few months has been accompanied by equally loud anguish over the supposed perils — just look at the open letter calling for a pause in AI experiments. This tumult risks blinding us to more immediate risks — think sustainability and bias — and clouds our ability to appreciate the real value of these systems: not as generalist chatbots, but instead as a class of tools that can be applied to niche domains and offer novel ways of finding and exploring highly specific information.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. The news that a dozen companies have developed ChatGPT plugins is a clear demonstration of the likely direction of travel. A “generalized” chatbot won’t do everything for you, but if you’re, say, Expedia, being able to offer customers a simple way to organize their travel plans is undeniably going to give you an edge in a marketplace where information discovery is so important.