Vijay Garg
Nature of AI will be inherently changing the face of work and we have to understand the technology behind it and be careful in how we use it
Back in late 2022, few were surprised to learn that someone in Silicon Valley had finally managed to build a better chatbot. A chatbot that could actually raise the bar in terms of what consumers should expect? Many agreed that it was about time.
What almost no one had prepared for, on the other hand, was a chatbot of the kind eventually unveiled. ChatGPT, it soon became clear, as hundreds of thousands of people gave the tool a try, was more than just the latest iteration of artificial intelligence (AI) -powered customer-assistance software. Many used the word “revolutionary” to describe what the system was capable of doing. Others said the technology seemed sentient like they were interacting with another human and not a machine.
And now, attention is turning to the technology’s next phase: the one where businesses put it to work. Across industries and at companies of all types and sizes, there are already countless examples of ChatGPT deployments in actions
In nearly every case, business leaders acknowledge that it’s still early days for ChatGPT. They’re trailing the technology, “playing with the tool,” getting a feel for what it can and cannot do. According to the Dell Technologies 2023 Innovation Index report, 59% of Indian businesses are currently investing or exploring the feasibility of investing in AI to advance innovation.
Many say they’ve already seen enough to know that they could be onto something big. In a report on generative AI that McKinsey published soon after ChatGPT was made available to the public, they pointed out that the technology is one of several recently released platforms that make up the “latest class” of deep learning systems.
Challenges and opportunities
Platforms like ChatGPT are trained on data from the internet, not on information held by individual businesses. This is getting underlined starkly with businesses not knowing how to fully extract value from data coming through AI channels employed across supply chains. The chatbots also come with their limitations. They will be vulnerable to inaccurate information and bias if the input is not tailored to these chatbots. The rampant use of ChatGPT might also open channels to security threats.
ChatGPT is exciting for Indian businesses but it is changing every day. The nature of AI will be inherently changing the face of work. We have to understand the technology behind it and be careful in how we are using it. ChatGPT might be very smart but it is far from perfect.
(The author is Retired Principal Educational columnist
Malout Punjab).