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To create is human. For the past 300,000 years, we’ve been unique in our ability to make art, cuisine, and societies to imagine and create something new where there was nothing before. Now we have company. While you’re reading this sentence, generative artificial intelligence programs are responding to emails, preparing tax returns, and providing health advice.

Artificial intelligence has already had a wide impact on our lives. AIs have been used to price medicine and houses, assemble (组装) cars, determine what ads we see on social media. But generative AI, which can create wholly novel content, is much newer.

Supporters believe this is just the beginning, that generative AI will change the way we work and engage with the world, unlock creativity and scientific discoveries, and allow human beings to achieve previously unimaginable goals.

This shift marks the most important technological breakthrough since social media. Generative AI tools have been adopted greedily in recent months by the public, thanks to programs like ChatGPT, which responds to virtually any question, and Dall-E, which allows you to produce any image you dream up. In January, ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly users.

This craze caught off guard many tech companies and has stimulated an intense race in Silicon Valley. In weeks, Microsoft and Google have shifted their entire corporate strategies to seize control of what they believe profitable. Microsoft is investing $10 billion in Open AI, creator of ChatGPT and Dall-E, and announced plans to integrate generative AI into its Office software and search engine. Google declared a “code red” corporate emergency in response to the success of ChatGPT and rushed its own search-oriented chatbot to market.

But this gold rush could also prove disastrous. In a winner-takes-all battle for power, these companies risk repeating past mistakes, such as prioritizing growth over safety. While there are many potentially good aspects of these new technologies, even tools designed for good can have unforeseen I and ruinous consequences. This is the story of how the gold rush began—and what history tells us about what could happen next.