By Michaela Gordoni
Should Gen Z be going to ChatGPT for advice? The answer is debatable, but that’s what the younger generations are doing.
“They don’t really make life decisions without asking ChatGPT what they should do,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at Sequoia Capital’s AI Ascent event earlier this month. “It has the full context on every person in their life and what they’ve talked about.”
Altman says they are masters of the system.
“They really do use it like an operating system,” he said. “They have complex ways to set it up to connect it to a bunch of files, and they have fairly complex prompts memorized in their head or in something where they paste in and out.”
He explained that older people tend to use ChatGPT like a Google search. Those in their 20s and 30s use it for life advice. College-age people use it like an “operating system.”
In February, OpenAI reported that college students were its most engaged group. Pew Research reported last year that 26% of U.S. teens ages 13-17 used ChatGPT for schoolwork. A study conducted earlier this year reported that 15% of 18 to 26-year-olds use AI to plan dates and 12% turn to it for romantic advice.
A Pearl study from earlier this year found that 41% of Gen Z trust AI more than humans in the workplace, and 50% are more comfortable telling a work issue to AI than to their manager. Gen Z (83%) also experiences the most anxiety out of any generation when they need to ask a question, regardless of whether it’s in person or online.
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“The most glaring concern for employees is that they don’t know when they are getting inaccurate information if they’re relying solely on AI for answers,” Pearl CEO Andy Kurtzig said. “Purdue researchers presented a study showing ChatGPT got programming questions wrong 52% of the time… The fact that the most Gen Zers surveyed trust AI over humans is staggering, maybe even dystopian, and carries immense business implications.”
As AI grows more sophisticated, some lawmakers have raised concerns. Last year, California lawmakers introduced a bill that would require AI companies to remind users that they are talking to a robotic system. Utah also passed a law that requires companies to disclose when a user is interacting with AI on their systems.
“We’re very early in our explorations here, but I think what people want…is a model that gets to know me and gets more useful to me over time,” Altman said.
Whether that’s a good or a bad thing…well, time will tell.
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