ChatGPT has many strengths and will undoubtedly deliver benefits to organisations but much of the hype needs to be dispelled first.
Following its launch on 30 November 2022, ChatGPT was hailed by some as a technological revolution that would transform the nature of work across a whole range of industries and proclaimed by others as a destroyer of jobs, educational standards, and original thought.
There’s a world of difference between using the technology for transformational business value versus using it for personal benefits. And a smart tool capable of responding to questions posed in natural language with answers that sound quite human may be useful in some contexts, but it certainly doesn’t represent a technological revolution.
One of the issues with ChatGPT is that people are having the wrong conversations about it. They are talking about using it to do things that humans can already do, just faster and cheaper. That is known as the AI fallacy.
Instead, the conversation should be about getting the technology to do things that we cannot yet do because of cost or technological resourcing limitations. An example would be the instantaneous personalisation of website content to suit each individual user. Impossible to do with existing technologies, but well within the reach of ChatGPT.
On the other hand, there are also numerous myths relating to the capabilities and nature of ChatGPT that need to be debunked before those conversations can take place.