OpenAI’s and Google’s newest AI tools are pretty clever, but tiny companies with long track records still build more indispensable products—with or without AI. The “Chat” in ChatGPT’s name neatly encapsulates a major element of why OpenAI’s AI-infused assistant has had such epoch-shifting impact. We’ve been using PCs and phones to chat with humans for years—at least since the era of AOL Instant Messenger.