The tech tool of 2023 has to be ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence writing platform from OpenAI, that has been sweeping social media conversations and the business world.
I have played with it a little bit and for someone with a journalism degree, I am absolutely astonished at the quality of the writing. There are limitations, but as they add features and increase the depth of the database, the accuracy and colloquial tone will improve.
I used it with a paragraph in a client memo that I didn’t like the way it sounded. I asked Chat GPT to clean up the language and make it more academic, and it did. Solid word choices and some syntax correction.
In a recent survey by Korn Ferry, they found their respondents to have a very specific opinion: “According to the survey, which polled professionals across industries, 46% are already using ChatGPT to complete work tasks. More telling, upwards of 80% say ChatGPT is a “legitimate, beneficial work tool” that will be a regular part of their workday in the future.
I asked it to write me a paragraph about investing in precious metals as a hedge against inflation. It gave me a pretty strong, albeit generic answer, with a quality and word choice as good if not a little better than most newspaper writing today. It doesn’t have the depth of research or individual quotes, but was impressive:
“Investing in precious metals, such as gold, silver, and platinum, can be a smart strategy to hedge against inflation. Unlike paper currency, precious metals have intrinsic value and are seen as a safe-haven asset during times of economic uncertainty. As inflation erodes the value of paper currency, the price of precious metals tends to rise, making them a valuable tool for preserving purchasing power. Furthermore, precious metals are a tangible asset that can be held outside of the traditional financial system, providing a level of security in case of economic disruption. While there are risks involved in any investment strategy, including precious metals, they can be a valuable addition to a well-diversified portfolio as a hedge against inflation.”
While this isn’t perfect, it’s close.
I asked Chat GPT: Tell me in a professional business tone, why ChatGPT is an effective tool for business?
“As a language model trained on vast amounts of data, ChatGPT offers a range of benefits that make it an effective tool for businesses. Firstly, it can understand and respond to natural language inputs, making it easy for users to interact with and get answers from. This means that ChatGPT can handle a variety of tasks such as answering customer queries, providing product information, and offering support and guidance to customers.
In addition, ChatGPT’s ability to learn from interactions means that it can improve its responses over time, becoming more effective and efficient at handling queries and tasks. This can result in cost savings for businesses, as ChatGPT can handle a large volume of queries and tasks, freeing up human resources for other tasks.”
By tweaking the prompts you ask ChatGPT, you can get the text to align even closer to your goals.
The big question is, is this ok to use? The ethical considerations for ChatGPT will be a topic of conversation for years to come.
Teachers and professors will have to approach this like they did Wikipedia and Google when those platforms rose to popularity. Managers will need to set parameters with their teams, and the public will now have an additional filter of skepticism with which to look through when reading something.
Is it plagiarism to include something in your original writing that ChatGPT wrote?
As I have used it, I use it as a guide. The same way I do spell check and Grammarly. It’s a helpful tool but I would never publish something in its entirety that ChatGPT wrote putting my name at the top. But when my left and right brains enter into a battle royale while I’m trying to figure out a sentence or a word to tie some thoughts together, I see no problem using this tool to help.
It’s no different than sending a written document to an editor to edit. We don’t consider that unethical or plagiaristic. Nor should we consider using this tool as any more than that. That is, until it’s used to replace human thought, not simply as a tool to augment.
At G8 Strategies, our head of digital and technology is Amanda Long. She’s pretty amazing at finding the latest and greatest tools to help us do our jobs better and serve our clients better. While jumping into things usually takes me a while, I have enjoyed running ChatGTP through its paces.
I see us using this more and more in our professional work, but again, as a tool to be used the same as Google Sheets, spell check and Grammarly.
Another side note as of now ChatGPT is only knowledgeable about the world up to 2021, so any new tactics, current events, trends – even who the president is not known to ChatGPT, so keep that in mind and verify the information. Chat only knows what Chat knows.
At the end of the day, it is up to the user/author to balance the ethical considerations of a high-powered tool such as ChatGPT with the original thoughts and ideas to create a finished product.
For now, we’ll experiment with its uses, help us be more efficient and productive, brainstorm, create outlines and ideas, refine and edit our writing and have ChatGPT help us create useful ideas to get us started.
