ChatGPT has only been with us for nine months, and we’re only just starting to learn how it works and how AI systems arrive at their decisions.

Never mind last week, but can you remember googling AI last November? A Google Trends report for South Africa, and the rest of the world, shows hockey stick growth for the search term at the end of that month, just as ChatGPT was unveiled.

The report also says there was more interest in the topic from people in the Western Cape than in Gauteng, while globally, the highest proportion of people searching for it were in Vietnam, followed by China (where ChatGPT isn’t available) and then Romania, of all places. While there’s no cause to doubt these results, why are more people searching for AI in Vietnam than anywhere else?