OpenAI Launches An AI Browser - Daily Laterals #3

Welcome to Day 3 of Daily Laterals - a new short email I send every day with one piece of information or topic that stood out to me.

OpenAI just launched a browser.

Called ChatGPT Atlas.

It’s a Comet AI competitor (boy was I ahead of the curve on that one) and it might change everything.

Everyone and their aunt is launching a browser.

Why? Because tier 1 data is the juiciest type of data for AI. Why bother asking for information when it can just parse everything you’re doing on the browser and use that to train itself even further.

It’s probably the big next battlefield when it comes to your data.

Chrome wants your data so it can sell you ads.

Safari wants your data so it can sell you premium subscriptions for privacy.

AI Browsers want data so they can keep getting smarter.

Should you use it?

Short answer: yes. At least as a part-time browser.

It’s fascinating what you can do with it and how you can program it to do tasks for you. I’m still writing this newsletter manually because I like the process, but I’m pretty sure I’m only going to be editing and curating the content pretty soon.

But if you use any AI browser, forget about privacy.

Presume everything you’re doing on an AI browser is public. If you’re ok with that, you can actually use it to save around 2 hours a day in its current state.

This might be a huge flop. But it is also the first real existential threat to Chrome and Safari in the past decade.

My bet is that it’s still a tool for early adopters and techies and will likely be that for the next 2-3 years, since traditional online browsing behavior is so engrained in all of us.

But it has the potential to truly change the way the internet works in the future.