The speed of disruption brought on by a worldwide rush into artificial intelligence (AI) was on full display this week, sending shares of education-technology company Chegg Inc. plunging, leading IBM to halt some hiring and prompting a chatbot ban at Samsung Electronics Co.
Chegg shares at one point had lost half their value Tuesday before closing 48% lower after the company said OpenAI’s ChatGPT is threatening the growth of its homework-help services. The San Diego-based company makes most of its money from subscriptions and offers online guidance for test taking and essay-writing, tasks some students are outsourcing to freely available ChatGPT tools. Educational publisher Pearson Plc fell by the most in more than six years in London.
