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'Death by LLM': AI Leaves a Trail of Online Destruction

The West Australian

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Details

Date Published
21 Nov 2024
Priority Score
2
Australian
Yes
Created
8 Mar 2025, 02:41 pm

Authors (1)

Description

The first casualties of generative AI offer lessons for other businesses. 

Summary

The article explores the impact of generative AI on businesses, focusing on the case of Chegg, an online education service whose share price plummeted by 99% over four years. This decline is attributed to a combination of a post-pandemic slump in digital learning and competition from AI models like ChatGPT, which offer comparable educational support for free. The article highlights the broader economic repercussions of AI advancement, particularly the disruption of existing business models. While it touches upon the negative consequences and challenges posed by AI technologies, it does not delve deeply into existential or catastrophic risks associated with advanced AI systems.

Body

The EconomistTECHNOLOGY‘Death by LLM’: AI leaves a trail of online destructionIn less than four years the share price of Chegg, an online education service, has dropped by 99 per cent.A post-pandemic slump in digital learning is partly to blame for its tumble. A bigger problem for the company, though, is artificial intelligence .Its customers are mostly students who want help answering their homework assignments, which often involves the virtual support of a human tutor.The rise of ChatGPT and its kind have created a free substitute for that service. On an earnings call on November 12, Nathan Schultz, Chegg’s boss, admitted that “technology shifts have created headwinds”.Read the article