Debunking ChatGPT hyperbole
Why the 1% usage FOMO claims are wrong
Lately, my feeds are flush with the same talking points about ChatGPT amongst copywriters.
“GPT is used by less than 1% of the world!”
“Less than 1% of the world knows about it!”
“We are the real 1%! Don’t miss out on GPT!”
This is simply not true, based on stats:
Current global population: 8.022B
Global smartphone usage: 6.92B
Global Internet penetration: 5.16B
OpenAI web visits (Jan 23): 672M
ChatGPT users (Jan 23): 100M+*
Granted, the last 2 metrics are 2 months old.
Yet the final number, monthly active users (MAU), is likely to 10x in less than 10 months.
Yes, I realize 100M is still only 1.25% of 8.022B.
But it’s the awareness (web visits) which matters.
So much so, it’s the denominator of the Q Score.
Q Score
The Q Score is a 60 year old marketing formula.
Survey an audience, measure appeal/awareness.
Each item gets scored A, B, C, D, E, or F.
A: Favorite. B: Great. C: Good. D: Fair.
E: Poor. F: Unknown.
(A if it’s your go-to, F if you never heard of it.)
Tally up the As, divide by (A+B+C+D+E). Presto!
Positive Q-score:
But wait there’s more! For the Eeyore in your life:
Add up Ds and Es, divide by (A+B+C+D+E). Voila!
Negative Q score:
OpenAI broke the Top 50 websites worldwide.
Over half of the world has Internet. Over half of Internet users regularly consume some form of news (email, social, streaming, TV, YouTube).
It was TIME’s cover story this month.
GPT has a moderate-to-high positive Q-score.
Mark my words.
It’ll be the 2023 tech story.
While tragic, SVB will not compare by year’s end.
To be clear, it is still exceedingly early in the game, given AI’s exponential acceleration of decades’ progress into the events of mere days.
But, as our teachers, and now LLMs have taught us, words matter! (This is Medium, after all.)
Let’s not insult the original sacrament of the written word from that vaunted yonder, the real AI™ — the audience’s intelligence.
As critics, founders, writers, etc., we would all do well to reflect accurate data, without the campy FOMO sales shtick (while we have still jobs!).
Thanks for coming to my TED talk. Moonwalk time 🕺🏾
*ChatGPT hit 100M users in 2 months, and we’re in month 5. TikTok, 9. Instagram, 30. Spotify, 55. Uber, 70. How would this happen if <1% of the world knew about it? Make it make sense already.
CALLS TO ACTION/MISCELLANEOUS/POSTSCRIPT:
1. Click the applause emoji button below to “clap” for this story. It helps others see the story, helps the story be “selected” by the Medium newsfeed algorithm, lets me know my work is worth writing, reading and recommending and makes me feel validated and fuzzy, because honestly, whose cold, dead heart isn’t instantly thawed and revived by the dizzying dopamine of notifications? Like, share, retweet, lather, rinse, repeat.
2. Full disclosure: for “premium” AKA “members only” Medium stories, “claps” are one of many variables in the labyrinthine formula which compensates we Medium “Partners”. Apologies for the legalese; feel free to imagine me air-quoting each of the above quoted terms.
3. Please share this story with your contacts and/or social network(s): Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, email, etc.
4. Connect with me: Medium, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Product Hunt, AngelList, Quora and formerly Quibb. (I think that’s all of them!) Write me via email too! (fzafar1[at]gmail[dot]com)
5. Call or text if you want. (917) 982–3849.
6. Yes, those are my real personal email address and personal mobile number, yes I read/reply to every single message, even if it extends the realm of seconds and minutes and hours into days and weeks and months (but never years, so we have that going for us), and yes, both have proudly been a matter of public record for years now, as have my mental health advocacy and suicide prevention activism. I’m always happy to make new friends, read/hear/listen, support, and help in any way I can. That’s why I’m Medium’s resident cheerleader.
7. Read my writing and follow me on Medium.
10. I love you more than Congress loves getting nothing done.
