Introducing Brain Rush

I wrote this book because of a gut feeling that generative artificial intelligence, a system that delivers new and original content in response to natural language queries, could spark enormous change in the way people live and work. What prompted that feeling was the 40% rise in the value of Nvidia stock – bringing its stock market value to $1 trillion – three weeks after its May 2023 earnings report which featured a much higher than expected surge in revenue. The source of its soaring revenue growth was demand from companies using its chips to train and operate generative AI applications such as ChatGPT. This prompted a countervailing intellectual response: to investigate whether my gut reaction foretold a significant wave of opportunity or an emotional overreaction to a compelling sales pitch. Here are some of the questions I set out to answer in this book: