Given the amount of attention paid to ChatGPT, the AI chatbot that's been wowing the internet over the past few months, it feels as though humanity just discovered the wheel. OpenAI, ChatGPT's founder, was set up as a nonprofit independent AI research lab in 2015 to promote and develop "friendly" AI in a way that "benefits humanity as a whole." Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other tech figures pledged $1 billion toward its goals.