As a software engineer, I relied on Google as my go-to search engine for years. However, in just five months, my perception of Google had drastically changed. The endless ads-driven and irrelevant results made it almost impossible to find what I needed without navigating through multiple pages and modifying my search query several times. This all changed with the announcement of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which became my most used tool at work. The speed at which ChatGPT delivered mostly accurate results surpassed my expectations. It was like a breath of fresh air. However, drawing parallels to the geopolitical and economic powers of the world, I cannot help but see a similarity between the rise of ChatGPT and the current state of the United States as the global superpower.

There is a famous saying that is attributed to the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”.

Partial Utility Type

The elephant is one of the most powerful and massive animals in the world, it can easily lift logs with its trunks and knock trees over using its heads. You might think it is strange then to find that a circus elephant is usually kept tied up by its handlers with a length of rope that it could easily break. This is because it has been conditioned: Trainers accomplish this through the use of a heavy metal chain to tie the elephant while it is still young. The elephant learns during its development that it cannot break the bonds and it associates them with its limits, boundaries, and freedoms. Later, when it is fully grown and is of adult size and strength, it still believes it cannot break that bond and so, it never really try. From then on, only a rope is necessary to keep it from breaking its bonds, freeing itself and realizing its true strength and potential. By now you may have realised that I am not really talking about elephants, right?