Meet Your New Chatbot Co-Worker
Generative AI has spawned a ton of hype. Here’s how to leverage it in your own work.
With the rise of bots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, artificial intelligence has unleashed more than $5 trillion worth of hype into the Nasdaq-100 Index since January. While previous AI algorithms were typically relegated to background operations—determining, say, the content of your social media feed—these new so-called generative AI tools let users interact directly to create something from scratch. Trained on vast collections of data, they’re capable of responding to users’ prompts with reams of original text, images or code within seconds.
If proponents are to be believed, that augurs sweeping change for business, with the potential to replace whole swaths of the workforce and turbocharge productivity for those who remain. But chief executive officers and employees alike are unsure what to do with it, says David Waller, a partner at consulting firm Oliver Wyman. “Most companies are panicking because they feel like they must be the ones who are behind—everyone else is doing something behind the scenes that is grand and impressive,” Waller says. “And many of these people are finding themselves having to answer to their board of directors as to why they’re also not doing things that are grand and impressive.”