CEO speaks

Artificial Intelligence, better known as AI, has become a game-changer in modern society. From simple chatbots to complex algorithms — AI has the potential to touch and transform every imaginable aspect of human life. And we are lucky to be around just when this revolution — the impact of which shall be far greater than even the industrial revolution — is taking shape!

The AI tool being talked about the most nowadays is ChatGPT — Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer. ChatGPT was developed by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research laboratory. The development of ChatGPT was based on the idea of a language model that could generate human-like responses to textual prompts. The team at OpenAI used a neural network architecture called a “transformer” to train the model on a massive dataset of text. The dataset consisted of billions of words from various sources, including books, articles, and websites. The end result — GPT-3 — released in 2020, is the most advanced language model to date, with over 175 billion parameters.

ChatGPT has been a major disruptor and has the potential to revolutionise the way humans interact with machines — and essentially live their lives! It has already been used in various applications, including customer service, language translation, and content creation. The possibilities of use for varied user groups seem endless and limited only by human imagination.

Let us consider a few usage examples to understand the versatility of ChatGPT:

· It can be a valuable tool for students to enhance their learning and improve their academic performance. It can be used to provide instant help and assistance in various areas such as homework, essay writing, language learning, advanced research, study aids etc.

· It can assist journalists with research, fact-checking, and identifying potential sources. It can also help with generating article ideas and suggesting angles for stories.

· It can help customer service representatives by providing answers to frequently asked questions, handling customer complaints, and providing personalised recommendations.

· ChatGPT can assist creative professionals with generating ideas, brainstorming, and overcoming the much-maligned “writer’s block”.

· Lawyers can utilise ChatGPT for legal research, drafting legal documents, and identifying relevant case law.

· ChatGPT can assist entrepreneurs with business planning, market research, and identifying potential funding options. In fact, the algorithm is so powerful that it can essentially provide all the data and analysis that a potential entrepreneur needs — by providing data-validated insights and recommendations on business planning and location, legal requirements, funding options, and marketing strategy based on market analytics. By inputting relevant data and questions related to a specific business opportunity, ChatGPT can provide personalised recommendations that are tailored to one’s specific needs and goals. It can also undertake a detailed risk analysis and perform scenario planning!

· Apart from the specific target audiences as above, ChatGPT can also assist with a variety of tasks for all of us — such as managing schedules, providing entertainment, travel planning, shopping, cooking, mental health support, and language learning. All that we need to know will be presented to us just by typing in a simple query.

These are just a few of the potentially unlimited uses of this fantastic tool. And while we are talking about ChatGPT specifically, we must also remember that there are other tools that are on the horizon that are expected to be just as powerful. Microsoft, which has invested billions in ChatGPT creator OpenAI, used ChatGPT in their Bing search engine and Edge web browser and is betting big that AI will define the next generation of big tech. Google has also started work on their own version of advanced AI called “Bard”. Amazon, which has been working on similar tech for a long time, announced a partnership with Hugging Face, an AI startup developing a ChatGPT rival. Other Chinese behemoths, including Baidu, Alibaba, JD.com and WeChat parent Tencent have stated they are working on ChatGPT-like products of their own. WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram parent Meta, a traditional leader in the AI space, is also working on similar products. The AI tools space shall be crowded with competing products sooner than we may expect!

But many critics have raised serious concerns about AI taking over our lives. It takes vast amounts of data to train such systems and the output, which depends on the data used to train it, can reflect any biases, errors or falsities inherent in the original dataset. Further, many have raised plagiarism detection issues with the unethical use of these tools.

Nevertheless, AI is destined to transform how human society functions. This is just the beginning. With AI’s immense potential, it is crucial to explore its benefits and challenges, and work towards building a more equitable and sustainable future for all of us!

Dr Sanku Bose, Group CEO

(Techno India Group)