Business | Death by LLM

What ChatGPT’s corporate victims have in common

The first casualties of generative AI offer lessons for other businesses

A robot hand closing a laptop.
Illustration: George Wylesol

In less than four years the share price of Chegg, an online education service, has dropped by 99%. A post-pandemic slump in digital learning is partly to blame for its tumble. A bigger problem for the company, though, is artificial intelligence (AI). Its customers are mostly students who want help answering their homework assignments, which often involves the virtual support of a human tutor. The rise of ChatGPT and its kind have created a free substitute for that service. On an earnings call on November 12th Nathan Schultz, Chegg’s boss, admitted that “technology shifts have created headwinds”. The same day the firm said that it would fire a fifth of its workforce.

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This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Death by LLM”

Business

November 23rd 2024

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