As we are experiencing or hearing about a huge revolution called ChatGPT from Open AI, we may have varying reactions to this new technology. Some organizations, especially those in content creation and marketing, are embracing the new technology as it expedites the content creation process. Other organizations, like educational institutions, are seeing it as a threat because of the sheer capacity it brings. From the information and research I have come across, ChatGPT has the ability to pull from a diverse range of text sources such as Wikipedia, books, websites, and news articles. This is why it is so powerful a tool to help shape opinion papers for research or to develop a marketing strategy. It is something I plan to explore more in the coming months. But this is the first of many AI-based tools that I predicted in my book, Top of the Mountain Leadership, that would be coming in the next few years. The time is now for leaders to understand how to best leverage AI when it makes sense and prep our organizations to remain competitive as I believe more of these AI-based tools are coming soon.
Leaders will need to understand how new technologies can drive costs out of cumbersome processes. In the past, we leveraged process improvement methodologies like Lean and Agile to discover the best targets for testing new ideas and streamlining processes. I think tools like ChatGPT can be used to make our organizations/roles more efficient. The question for leaders will be, “Can AI do it better, faster, or cheaper than a human?” If so, that is probably a good target for implementing a technology solution like this. But let’s not forget the human element in this process. From what I have seen with ChatGPT, it is not a plug-and-play situation as the writing can be bland or not 100% accurate so the data needs to be validated and put into context. ChatGPT is pulling from datasets and can help narrow down what we should be focusing on but not a complete replacement for what our human critical thinking capabilities can do. We need to redesign workflows and processes so that there is an understanding of how the technology will be used to enhance our roles within our companies.
To stay competitive, the implementation of new technologies will be critical. We are not looking at wholesale replacement of jobs with technology. AI is not advanced enough to replace humans across job sets. According to Malcolm Frank, Paul Roehrig, and Ben Pring, authors of What To Do When Machines Do Everything, look for these characteristics in choosing what tasks to automate:
- Tasks that are highly repetitive. Think about high-volume tasks that occur at great scales across your organization.
- Tasks that need little human judgment. Think about tasks that have “if-this-then-that” logic and require heavy computation or time.
- Tasks that need little empathy. These tasks are generally not customer-facing, although the output is to drive speed and accuracy. These items can include invoicing, scheduling, or research.
Implementing technology for the right tasks will drive better business results and provide a competitive advantage over other organizations that rely on manual or traditional processes.
Next month, I plan to dive a bit deeper into ChatGPT and see how this technology works. I will share my results with you and share what leaders can do now to incorporate them to streamline tasks or leverage the technology to help your team.