On November 15, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, published a modest yet momentous announcement for ChatGPT users. In a tweet on X, the “father” of the chat, which celebrated its third birthday last month, declared that his “child” would finally stop using the long dash.
“This is a small victory, but a joyful one,” Altman proudly wrote. “If you ask it not to use a double dash, it finally does what it’s supposed to do!” This means that the chat will remove its distinctive trademark, the mark that reveals the use of AI software to anyone trying to conceal that the text wasn’t written by them.
The long dash may bother over 800,000 active users of the chat, who want to “go with it and feel without it,” or in other words – not have it show on them. But this is the smallest problem the world faces and will face as a result of the AI revolution, which the chat, holding nearly 60% of the market share, is leading.
On November 30, 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a language model trained on massive amounts of internet text, allowing it to understand questions and requests in natural language and respond coherently and relevantly.
It can answer questions, explain complex topics, write sophisticated texts, articles, emails, poems, and stories, code, transcribe, translate, and summarize long texts.
It was launched as a free demo version, intended to run the software, gather user feedback, and identify weaknesses. This was the first time it was possible to have a conversation with artificial intelligence, during which the chat could answer follow-up questions, admit mistakes, challenge false assumptions, reject inappropriate requests, and simultaneously remember and learn from the context of the conversation.
The success was phenomenal: Within just five days, over a million users had accessed the platform. Three years later, nearly nine times as many are using it.
Altman’s “baby” led a global revolution. Not only did it turn AI into the hottest product on the market, it attracted unprecedented investment in the field, which some claim has inflated into a bubble destined to burst. Its widespread effects terrify some researchers, while others see it as a blessing and a step forward in human development.
Trend analyst Adi Yoffe describes the entrance of artificial intelligence into our lives as a “tectonic shift” whose full implications we do not yet fully understand. “It affects all kinds of areas, and its ease of use makes it a very accessible tool,” she analyzes. “The feeling that all human knowledge is at our fingertips is very deceptive. Tools do the work for us, people get used to convenience, don’t ask questions, settle for superficial knowledge, and deteriorate.”
Yoffe says, “There’s something in it that undermines the model of searching for knowledge and valuing experience. We feel like we know everything, unlike my generation, which, when we entered the library, saw its size and the number of books and understood that we couldn’t get to everything. Who will invent the next Iron Dome? It’s like with Waze: When I set out on the road, I rely on it completely. But for me, the biggest concern is the inability to distinguish between truth and falsehood. We don’t know if the information we get is reliable or who verified it. I also see a threat to the future of inventions, because eventually the machine will invent new things, not humans, and whoever controls the machines will rule and profit.”
According to Yoffe, “We will pay a price for this revolution. Just as the industrial revolution distanced humans from nature, there is a claim that AI will change the amount of free time people have and the social hierarchy. A 25-year-old child will be considered smarter than a 55-year-old who accumulated experience and expertise. I call this ‘the breakdown of traditional hierarchies.’ The experienced layer of people becomes irrelevant. This is why I work with managers on developing this ‘muscle’ to remain connected and creative. I understand the benefit of AI, but I fear the human race becoming passive couch potatoes, enslaved to technological tools.”
50% Will Work, 50% Will Not
Professor David Passig, a futurist at Bar-Ilan University, is aware of the chat’s drawbacks but emphasizes its advantages. “Some say, ‘Oh no, ChatGPT will destroy humanity.’ But its potential is enormous,” explains Passig. “When fire was discovered, and later humans learned how to transfer it from place to place, there were fears and achievements. Without that understanding, the world wouldn’t look the way we know it. The goal of the chat is to replicate how the human brain thinks and processes information – and to enhance it. It’s an attempt to push the boundaries of existence.”
Passig adds, “It’s like in the 20th century they said: Let’s store information and send it from place to place and make it cheap and accessible, and that’s how the internet was invented. The chat tries to imitate how a human constructs sentences, but this is not real intelligence; it’s a statistical sequence of words drawn from an existing database. The dream is to invent models that don’t just retrieve, but also create things.”
“You’re talking about inventing things that aren’t written or found anywhere.”
“Exactly. Not being stuck in an existing database. Some claim it’s impossible because our brain works in a certain way. But when we understand our brain better, we can create intelligence from objects, not texts. With a huge number of objects, we can create a different understanding of reality.”
Professor Passig argues that AI is a stage, just as the invention of the computer was only a stage in the technological development of civilization. “What defines the human being is consciousness: Knowing that I know, that I appear as I appear, awareness of what we are. Our consciousness develops. But we don’t understand what it is or how the brain produces words. And the more we learn it and replicate its abilities, the more we can create new things.”
And new things create fear. Most of us don’t like having our comfort zone disrupted, and every advancement brings inherent anxieties. Some of the fear of the chat taking over our lives relates to the labor market.
People fear becoming unnecessary and losing their livelihoods. “Didn’t computers or printing do the same thing?” wonders Passig. “In the past 150 years, we shortened the workweek to five days, nine hours per day, and removed children and adults from the workforce to allow the very young to develop – and adults to survive.”
According to him, “Currently, 65% of the population works, and the rest rely on them. AI will bring us to 50% working and 50% not, and those who work will need to acquire different skills. It’s not such a significant difference. We also have to consider that we haven’t reached the peak yet.”
Technology Gives – and Takes
Experts claim that in a few years, the chat and its counterparts will already be considered “ancient.” They will be replaced by AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), which will possess intellectual abilities similar to humans. One that can learn, understand, and apply knowledge across a wide range of tasks, rather than being limited to a specific task.
Unlike “narrow” AI, like the current chat version, which excels in specific tasks such as chess or facial recognition, AGI will have human-like flexibility and adaptability and will be able to solve new problems and transfer knowledge across fields.
AGI is currently a theoretical goal in AI research and has not yet been realized. Professor Passig estimates it will take 10–15 years to become real. “Like God, technology gives and technology takes,” summarizes Dr. Roy Tzezana, futurist and AI researcher at Tel Aviv University and author of The Guide to the Future and The Masters of the Future.
“The question is, what is the balance? And the answer – there is no balance. Technology that affects all areas of life, like the internal combustion engine or air conditioning, changes the ecosystem and the way we think. The chat in five years won’t be the chat we know today. It will be the doctor competing successfully with a resident doctor – not only an oncologist, but one who understands a sub-subfield of cancer. In five years, when you want medical advice, you won’t need to schedule an appointment a year in advance because that’s the only available slot; you will ask a question and get an answer as if in front of a council of doctors.”
“And the chat won’t invent things and give wrong answers like today?”
“Time will heal that. In 2023, it lied, hallucinated, and made mistakes, and I would have told people not to rely on its diagnoses at all. Towards the end of 2024, studies were conducted on the chat’s ability to answer medical questions, and it competed with family doctors. In mid-2025, a Microsoft study found that the chat and its counterparts could formulate medical hypotheses with 80% accuracy.
He explains: ‘Do I recommend getting medical diagnoses from the chat? Yes, if you know what questions to ask so they’re not biased, which engine to use, and always – that it’s paid. I definitely recommend people consult AI before and after visiting the doctor. People tell me how they went to the doctor three or four times, and after consulting the chat, they explained what was wrong.’
He adds, “By the way, this will also happen with insurance agents. Who do you think I get insurance advice from? Artificial intelligence. And when I get a document from the insurer, I let the engines check it.”
One of the dangers of uploading personal documents to the chat is the risk of leaks.
“So you pay $20 a month and request that your information not be stored for more than 30 days and be deleted. You say, ‘I don’t trust it’ – and you trust Google? We need to understand that, for the first time, we have intelligence on demand. Those who know how to use these tools correctly can soar. It’s not about telling the chat ‘write me an article’ and calling it a day, but asking it to write ten articles, reading them, choosing the best, improving it with the chat, and striving for more. With willpower, motivation, and the pursuit of excellence, one can produce a better result with AI with less effort, more enjoyment, and in less time.”
Dr. Tzezana continues: “So the chat will weaken certain abilities and develop others, like management skills. You will be the leader of an entire team, even an entire department working for you. In the next decade, even AI itself will gain initiative, determination, and innovation of its own. And that will be the stage when we must recognize that we are no longer the only intelligent form of life on Earth.”
He concludes: “Humankind is no longer the sole master of its fate, but we must learn to live alongside our children of thought – the children we created, made of silicon and transistors, who also have their own thinking, and the ability to plan and execute programs. In ten years, it may not be us celebrating its 13th birthday, its bar mitzvah, but it celebrating it for itself, by itself.”