AI Is Evolving Quickly, But It Doesn't Have To Be Complicated.
Back in 2023, a bunch of new companies started popping up, promising that the days of super-intelligent robots had arrived. I was a skeptic (I still am), but I have to concede that AI has transitioned from a futuristic toy to a practical tool that most small businesses can and should use today.
Many previous advances in AI have impacted our lives, but it has been difficult to pin down exactly what relevance they have had for the typical small business owner. While I wouldn’t lose any sleep worrying about smart robots taking over our jobs tomorrow, the ever-expanding list of available AI tools really can be helpful to the small business owner without a significant investment of time or money.
Humans vs. AI and ChatGPT
As humans, we can recognize patterns in the world around us, understand what’s important about those patterns, and make decisions on how we utilize our time and resources to make our lives better. We develop our personal and professional skills and learn from our experiences, all of which help us make better decisions. At its core, AI’s goal is to teach machines to do more or less the same thing; recognize patterns, make decisions, and learn from experience.
AI tools like ChatGPT are rapidly being adapted to specific applications and industries, which opens up the possibility of being used in applications like customer service, chatbots, and virtual assistants. As long as you don’t stray from what the tool is designed to do, ChatGPT can do an excellent job handling conversations in a way that feels natural, informed, and useful, while taking away most of the annoying quirks of today’s chatbots
Specific Areas Where ChatGPT Can Help Small Business
Here are just a few areas where tools like ChatGPT are being used today by entrepreneurs and small businesses:
- Creative Content: Tools like ChatGPT and CoPilot can give you a starting point for creative content like blog posts and web pages. All you have to do is ask it to generate the content on a topic that it knows something about, and a few minutes later you have a decent first draft.
- Technical Content: My clients have reported that they have used ChatGPT to generate text for many different technical topics, ranging from job postings to service contracts to computer code. Although, just like creative content, you’ll want a human expert to make the final revisions.
- Customer Support: I would still be careful with any AI bots that interact directly with your customers, but if you are in a business where you are answering the same questions over and over again, or if you have a routine task like appointment scheduling, the AI tools can be useful.
For creative and technical content, it’s best to think about ChatGPT as more of a brainstorming tool rather than a final content creator. While it can do a good job of generating ideas and rough drafts, it’s best to have a human involved in revising the final draft.
Be Careful About Rushing Into AI
While it’s true that AI is finding its way into small business applications, it is important to approach this technology with a healthy dose of skepticism. The accuracy and reliability of AI is only as good as the data it is trained on, and it can take a lot of time and energy to get the tool to work correctly in business. While AI can shorten the time it takes to generate creative and technical content, the final revisions will most likely need to be made by a human. And it’s important to remember that poorly designed chatbots can lead to serious customer frustration and dissatisfaction.
If you would like to have a conversation about AI and its potential application for what you do, you can always schedule a free consultation with me as a way to get the ball rolling.