By Dawood Patel, CEO of Helm
ChatGPT has changed the world. Not necessarily because it’s new technology or something that the wide world of AI has not seen before, but because OpenAI has done such a stellar job of marketing their product that it has become the default term for artificial intelligence.
When the company was founded in 2015 – with backing from a consortium that included Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Amazon Web Services – the goal was to be a refuge for human-friendly AI, staffed by the world’s leading machine learning minds.
With the release of ChatGPT (and the GPT-4 language model that followed), the OpenAI team delivered on that promise, and humans are finding new ways to use ChatGPT every single day. And it deserves every inch of the coverage it’s getting because it has moved AI out of the abstract, into an understandable, achievable, and relatable realm.
People are excited about AI in a way that they couldn’t be before. This is an inflection point that is both scary and invigorating. It’s the starting point of a gold rush that will change the way we interact with technology.
ChatGPT has made it easier to make a case for AI integration, especially with clients who didn’t necessarily understand what natural language processing, large language models, and computer vision were. Now, companies with AI products can work with clients to move humans, employees and customers into a world where simple tasks can be automated in order for them to focus on higher order tasks. There is the concern that we will lose customer service jobs in the process, but we will still need people in place when AI is unable to assist, or in the many, many instances in which customers need the human touch.
Automation can therefore unlock more complex tasks which will now move into the human domain. This will, of course, mean that the end user will have greater expectations for every brand’s customer experience – the same way they felt when Uber revolutionised transport, AirBnB transformed travel accommodation, and Takealot changed the face of online shopping in South Africa.
Businesses will need to evolve or risk losing customers, who are now quickly becoming accustomed to experiences that are far richer and more personal.