After years, if not decades, of barely hanging onto its “next big thing” status, technology fueled by artificial intelligence is finally having its moment. And that moment has a lot to do with the early buzz generated by a product called ChatGPT.

Developed by the artificial intelligence lab OpenAI and benefiting from some generous, prescient funding from Microsoft, ChatGPT, as The New York Times recently put it, “is a chatbot that can automatically respond to written prompts in a manner that is sometimes eerily close to human.” Presumably, it will also one day be able to drive children to ballet lessons in boring suburbs with no cool bars or pick out creative gifts for spouses of 30 years when mortal capacity to do the same has long since been tapped.