How hot is ChatGPT on the Scoville Scale?🌶
Measuring the spiciness of generative AI
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How hot is ChatGPT, the now famous chatbot created by AI research company, OpenAI? In January, it reached 100 million monthly active users just two months after launch, which makes it the fastest growing app in history (by a mile). This week’s edition of The Process explores my hypothesis that the uniquely intense emotional experience of using generative AI drives its unprecedented growth rate.
ChatGPT needed just five days to reach one million active users
The chart above puts ChatGPT’s astonishing growth into perspective relative to other well-known apps. Instagram, the previous fastest app to reach one million users grew twice as quickly as the next fastest app, Spotify. When ChatGPT took the title last November, it smashed the record by growing 15 times faster than Instagram.
Now it’s time to use some complex scientific techniques to help us quantify just how hot these apps really are. I calculated the average number of new users per week Spotify, Instagram and ChatGPT each added to reach one million users. This happens to line up nicely with the Scoville scale, which is used to measure the spiciness of chili peppers. In my formula, 1 new user per week equals 1 Scoville heat unit. And I made this graphic I’m quite proud of.
What kind of chili pepper is ChatGPT?
Spotify added users at a rate of 46,667 sign ups per week to reach one million active users in five months. On the Scoville scale, Spotify is as spicy as a Tabasco pepper.
Instagram, the second fastest growing app, added users at a rate of 93,333 sign ups per week to reach one million active users in two and a half months. In Scoville units, Instagram is as hot as a Thai chili.
ChatGPT, the fastest growing app in history added users at an eye-watering rate of 1.4 million sign ups per week to reach one million active users in just five days. Moving to the top of the Scoville scale, that puts the AI chatbot somewhere between the infamous Ghost pepper and the Trinidad Scorpion.
Like chilis, hotter apps feel more intense
I created this somewhat silly comparison because I was looking for a way to take the speed at which generative AI software is spreading throughout our collective consciousness and roughly translate growth rate into a measure of intensity of user experience. My hypothesis is the unusual intensity of the emotions felt by people using ChatGPT has led to its unprecedented growth rate.
My hypothesis is the unusual intensity of the emotions felt by people using ChatGPT has led to its unprecedented growth rate.
For me, the Scoville comparison fits when I recall the intensity of my first experience using each of these apps. Spotify felt convenient, Instagram felt delightful, ChatGPT felt miraculous, unsettling, and disorienting. I was compelled to show friends and family what this chatbot was capable of, in some sense, as a warning. As I watched them experience generative AI for the first time, many had visceral reactions that mirrored my own, as if we had just experienced the Ghost pepper of apps.
Hot and getting hotter
My partner and I like to watch the show, Hot Ones, where host Sean Evans interviews guests as they proceed to eat chicken wings covered in a series of 10 increasingly spicy hot sauces. As the Scoville units rise with each wing, the guests struggle more and more to focus as the pain in their mouths increases. As a society, I think we face a similar challenge. As AI continues to spread and improve rapidly, the intensity of our feelings toward it will rise accordingly, and we must remain focused on learning how to live and work with this profoundly powerful new technology.
Like the guests on Hot Ones, most of whom make it to the end of the gourmet gauntlet, we should expect there will be pain, we should take breaks, drink milk, and share the experience with each other to find humor and new perspectives when possible. AI is very spicy technology, my super scientific methods confirmed it, and the thing we must do is help each other stay focused and thinking clearly as we navigate this new era, together.
Thanks for reading this edition of The Process. Please share and comment or you can email me at philip.deng@grantable.co
Philip Deng is the CEO of Grantable, a company building AI-powered grant writing software to empower mission-driven organizations to access grant funding they deserve.
Perfect comparison!