ChatGPT – Does it create value?
ChatGPT is both fun and horrifying at the same time. Some artificial intelligence leaders believe this is the start of a fundamental altering of our society/culture for the positive. They envision robots/computers doing everything and humans just enjoying themselves. Others believe this is the beginning of a War Games 2030 version in which AI takes over our internet and comes to life on a grand scale in a largely negative way. Joshua are you there?
I am no prognosticator, but if I were I would say that we need to be leery of both potential outcomes. To me there is an obvious middle ground here and a lesson to be learned by the business world.
In one respect, ChatGPT is not all that different from any other new tool an industry has used over the last century: Currently, the technology is ahead of its potential use cases or value-creation capability. We know that disruption is caused by innovation. Innovation, in turn, is something new that creates value. ChatGPT and AI certainly are new, but the race is on to determine how they can be used to create value.
I will draw a parallel to smart buildings and IoT. We have cheap sensors, lots of connectivity — both wired and wireless — collecting so many data. Yet we don’t have a lot of good applications available to harness that data to improve the user experience. It’s up to companies to figure out how to use the data to do some amazing things.
The workspace is a good testing ground for ChatGPT and AI. AI applications will make employees more productive, and both workers and companies who embrace this will benefit. However, do not throw caution to the wind. Overinvesting in the technology will not yield the desired results.
Just look at Facebook’s pivot towards virtual reality. AR/VR will have its place in the future, but the bet they placed on it was too early and it has cost them dearly as a business.
At Syska we will continue to use AI and even ChatGPT as they make sense to fit in our current philosophy: To invest in tools that enable our engineers to spend more time thinking and less just doing.
In conclusion, Joshua isn’t coming in the next 10 years, and AI will not replace humans anytime soon. Our job for the time being is to figure out how to use AI to create the greatest value for ourselves and for our business.
Written By Robert Ioanna