Wikipedia : 2023 Top 50 Report
Out of all the things that drew viewer attention in 2023, we can see some duality. Humans are so advanced in technology that the top spot is a chatbot showing how far artificial intelligence has gone, but so difficult in morality that there are two armed conflicts, a convicted criminal, and another who is being prosecuted yet still wishing to resume his political career. The usual entries on sports and movies are here, but reminding that India's huge population is a great counter to Americentrism (the top 10 alone includes two entries on India's favorite sport and the country's two highest-grossing movies of the year, and on the rest of the list there are four more entries on their prolific film industry), as is the worldwide popularity of association football (the biggest league and three very famous footballers, one of whom is retired; American football only scored an entry because of a player's new girlfriend), and also telling that the year was all over the place in Hollywood, with success stories (the 6 highest-grossing movies of the year plus the top earner from 2022, the big winner of the Academy Awards, and an acclaimed sequel), displays of failure (the expensive final chapter of a once-mighty franchise that didn't make much impact), and a case in-between (the latest by a legendary director that did not make much money but was hailed as one of the year's best movies). HBO provides two highly contrasting shows: an adaptation of unquestionable success that even brought in its main actor to this list, and a limited show of questionable quality whose controversies were higher than its viewership numbers. To remain in pairs, there are the two countries that most shape the list, a billionaire and the website he has been mishandling, the American head of government and the British head of state, a blonde singer in a billion dollar tour and a blonde actress in a billion dollar movie, and the late father of one of the year's deceased along with the late mother of that British king. Finishing it off, the yearly death list and four high-profile departures.
This particular text generator by OpenAI takes the top spot by a huge margin in a way few articles have, feeling less like a brief fascination with the macabre like last year's Dahmer and more like a harbinger of things to come, à la COVID-19's taking of our coveted first spot years ago. And like COVID-19, it's hard to imagine that the advancements that come with the rapid AI arms race brought on by ChatGPT's whirlwind popularity will not come without some barely-understood long-term side effects, loss of smell notwithstanding. Yes, there's plenty to look forward to if you're part of the AI in-crowd – better healthcare, more space travel, hell, maybe even immortality! But what this all means for the rest of us has yet to be seen, and if AI's frontmen and opinion polls are to be believed, it might even be the extinction of the human race. What are ya gonna do, right? Definitely not lobby world governments to let you make AI more and more powerful while convincing them to push for stricter restrictions on other companies' technology ... right?
