Tools like ChatGPT Are Coming, And They Can Help
From time to time, the world falls into obsession over Artificial Intelligence, and there have been some epic sci-fi movies that capture our collective angst about how AI will impact our lives in the future. We are in that space again this year, and this time we can thank a company called OpenAI which launched its nifty new tool ChatGPT.
Many previous advances in AI have impacted our lives, but it has been difficult to pin down exactly what relevance it’s had for the typical small business owner. And while I wouldn’t lose any sleep worrying about smart robots taking over our jobs tomorrow, tools like ChatGPT will give small businesses the opportunity to streamline some tasks.
Humans vs. AI and ChatGPT
As humans, we have the ability to 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 helps 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.
ChatGPT is an AI-based system designed to create a chat-like experience that is practically impossible to differentiate from interacting with a person. The tool can be adapted to specific applications and industries, which opens up for use 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: ChatGPT can do a good job of giving 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 & Prospect Interactions: I expect to see Chatbots go through a major jump in quality and usefulness in the next couple of years. We will begin to think of the better ones as reliable, capable virtual assistants that take the load off of routine tasks in lead generation and customer support.
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.