Humans are good at getting used to comfortable situations, but they are bad at planning for adversity. “What if” is the central question.

In today’s world, a lot can go wrong. It’s not just the large issues, such as climate change or the return of war to Europe. Everything is connected, and the consequences of seemingly small events can be huge. We’re much more susceptible to crises than we commonly think — yet nobody dares to think the unthinkable. It’s because people still cherish the (past) good times, and they don’t recognize the need to build a crisis attitude.

As an example, let’s look at the world of IT. Last week, Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered a large-scale outage when a bug in automation software brought down thousands of sites and applications. A single bug at a single company disrupted the entire internet for a whole day.

Let’s take this one step further: What if OpenAI either went out of business or its leadership decided to terminate access to ChatGPT in your country?

It’s rather unlikely that OpenAI will go out of business, yet I found a thought experiment on this. However, in the times of tightened geopolitics and larger-than-life egos, a suspension of service in entire countries is not entirely off the table — especially in small countries such as Switzerland, my home country. The total revenue share of Switzerland is small, and Switzerland has a reputation for behaving neutrally rather than striking back.

How would such a ban impact our country?

1. No more memes and quick searches

Many people use ChatGPT to create funny memes or as a replacement for Google Search. If ChatGPT were no longer available, memes could still be found on those old-school meme sites, and Google Search would take back the place it had held with users for decades.

People would complain initially, but get used to it very quickly. No big deal.

2. No more auto-generated content on social media

Nowadays, a lot of content on social media is AI-generated. So if ChatGPT weren’t available anymore in your country, would you get human-made social media back?

Nope.

Social media is a global business, so the AI-generated content would just be uploaded from a different country.

3. Lower productivity

Many people and companies use ChatGPT daily to help them with routine tasks that took lots of time before the age of AI — merging lists, creating website code, configuring software, to name just a few.

The unavailability of ChatGPT would cause productivity to nosedive, but there are alternatives to ChatGPT. Therefore, I guess people would be able to adapt their workflows quite quickly.

4. Frenzy for below-the-hood users

ChatGPT is just OpenAI’s end-user product. But you can use OpenAI’s large-language models in your own software through the OpenAI API — you would be surprised if you knew how many software companies do this today. To give you an idea, most software tools that scream “now leveraging AI!” at you rely on the OpenAI API in the background.

If OpenAI were to suspend access to its model in your country, all Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) hosted in your country would cease to function properly. However, it’s quite hard to define in what country a SaaS resides: Is it where the company is incorporated, where the company has its servers, or both?

5. Bankruptcy for AI startups

In the last 2 years, many startups were created entirely on the foundations of AI: Copywriting tools, virtual assistants, or niche analytics tools. If OpenAI pulled the plug on their API in your country, it would lead to an immediate and total revenue loss for all those startups, leading to widespread startup bankruptcy. Most probably, doubling the price of the OpenAI API would be enough to achieve the same effect on many AI startups.

Conclusion

Like the AWS outage last week, ChatGPT impacts our lives and companies in many ways. Humankind is very good at getting used to comfortable situations, but they are very bad at planning for adverse scenarios, irrespective of how remote they might be.

Do you need help in getting started to think the unthinkable? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. I have summarized my thoughts on crisis attitude and preparation in an eBook you can download for free.

Happy reading!