Life after Chat GPT

by Hugues Foltz Executive vice-president

Technology, Artificial intelligence

If your news feed has been similar to mine in recent weeks, you're likely aware of ChatGPT, the technology sensation of the moment. It's impossible for me not to talk about this famous software causing a stir around the globe.

For those who haven't heard yet, ChatGPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer) is a conversational agent launched last November by Open Ai, a California-based company also known for its popular DALL-E image generator.

Less than a week after its release, ChatGPT had already surpassed the million-user mark, a craze that is entirely justifiable when one considers its excellent content-editing abilities. With a simple request, the tool can explain quantum physics, find ideas for weddings or answer exam questions - all in less than a minute. Moreover, far from being limited to factual answers, ChatGPT can write creative texts such as opinion pieces, movie scripts and even poetry with great persuasiveness.

But what makes ChatGPT so revolutionary is its user-friendly interface and accessibility to everyone. Indeed, even those unfamiliar with technology or AI can quickly and easily learn how to use the application. Additionally, the service is currently available for free.

ChatGPT is part of a new era of technological democratization that has the potential to disrupt a whole range of socio-economic sectors instantly. This serves as evidence that artificial intelligence is no longer a far-fetched or unattainable option exclusively for engineers and I.T. companies, as previously believed.

What does this technology mean for companies? It’s difficult to ignore its potential to affect the job market significantly. Many industries are already making proper use of ChatGPT, drawn by the myriad of possibilities offered by its 175 billion parameters. Its adaptability, quickness, and writing proficiency make it an appealing, if not indispensable, tool. After all, artificial intelligence is widely used to optimize jobs or tasks that rely on human labour, and ChatGPT is no different.

In the customer service field, conversational agents are commonly used. ChatGPT is just the next logical step in this grand equation as it will not only be used to improve communication and collaboration with customers but also between employees. It will become much simpler to provide technical assistance 24h/7, respond to comments and queries, make automated business decisions and have more meaningful interactions with users.

Are you looking to create targeted marketing content? Generate brainstorming sessions? Automate data entry? Translate and adapt texts? Produce predictions based on machine learning? Nothing is too good for those who know how to take advantage of AI and use the situation to their benefit.

With this kind of application, you can automate tedious tasks such as report writing and enhance the accuracy and quality of data in companies. It can sort e-mails, identify important information in documents and generate summaries. Additionally, it’s handy for creating computer code in various programming languages.

That being said, is ChatGPT likely to replace specific jobs or overload the market? That remains to be seen. As happened before with other technologies, it will surely transform the workforce and the economic ecosystem in which we operate, whether we like it or not.

However, it’s important to remember that artificial intelligence models have limitations and require extensive training and fine-tuning to reach ideal performance levels. OpenAI acknowledges its software's current shortcomings, such as the possibility of producing inaccurate or discriminatory information, and it admits that ChatGPT has limited knowledge of events that occurred after 2021, the year in which it was trained.

Let's also not forget that ChatGPT isn't really capable of original thinking or creativity since it’s simply a robot programmed with pre-existing data and instructions. Therefore, it can't provide the same level of depth as a flesh-and-blood employee. Despite its capabilities, however stunning, the software cannot make ethical and moral decisions, comprehend linguistic subtleties and social contexts, or fully grasp customer needs.

Never underestimate the value of human creativity, which is still unmatched by any technology. Nevertheless, embracing artificial intelligence is an excellent opportunity to explore a fascinating world full of possibilities.