AI Anatomy Class · Part 8 · The birth of ChatGPT

78. November 30, 2022

Q. How did ChatGPT gather a million users in five days?

1. On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT: a free research preview that anyone could try.
2. Inside, it's just what this Part showed: a GPT-3.5-series model polished for chat with model answers and human praise.
3. What changed was how you used it. No tricky setup: you just typed in a chat box, like talking to a friend.
4. The response was explosive. Within 5 days of launch, it passed 1 million users.
5. How long did other popular services take to reach 1 million? These are widely quoted estimates.
6. About two months later, monthly users were estimated at 100 million. Some called it the fastest-growing app yet.
7. But problems showed up too: convincing wrong answers, and replies to dangerous requests. So safety mattered even more.

Chapter summary

• ChatGPT was released on November 30, 2022, as a free research preview.
• Inside: a GPT-3.5-series model + model answers + human praise (RLHF).
• 1 million users in 5 days, and about 100 million monthly users two months later (estimated).