by Generative AI is currently making waves. The ability of tools like ChatGPT and Dall-E 2 to take text and images from simple prompts to a standard that can often be considered human means everyone is wondering what this technology means for the future of work. Instead of making people obsolete, professionals are learning to use them to streamline their work and automate mundane tasks to get their jobs done faster and more efficiently.
AI and you: How ChatGPT can take your career to the next level
However, it’s important to remember that AI is not a replacement for human intelligence — and may never be. Understanding this means knowing your limitations and recognizing the situations where human ability, knowledge, judgment and creativity are still vital.
Learning how to use this powerful new technology to augment our own skills while freeing our time to focus on more challenging, higher value work will be a key workplace skill for many professionals in the age of AI.
First, what is ChatGPT?
For those of you who may not have tried or even heard of ChatGPT, first of all, what is it like living on Mars? Second, Cliff’s Notes’ version is a conversational interface (or chatbot) that understands and generates human speech. Imagine Alexa or Siri, but far more advanced and able to handle much more complex requests and responses.
It is an example of “generative AI” as it can use existing data to generate new results ranging from poetry and fiction to emails, essays, blog posts and even computer code. ChatGPT was developed by Open AI, which is funded by a number of technology and venture capital firms, most notably Microsoft, which recently invested $10 billion and integrated it with their Bing search engine. To get a little more technical, ChatGPT itself is actually a user interface (UI) for OpenAI’s grand language model, called GPT-3. It has been trained on a data set consisting of over 175 billion pieces of information, including websites, books and articles in many different languages.
How can professionals hone their skills with ChatGPT and Generative AI?
A recent guest on my webinar was Dominic Allon, CEO of cloud CRM solution provider Pipedrive. Speaking about how professionals and companies will incorporate generative AI into their work, he told me, “It’s helpful to think about how it used to be [technological advancements] have been integrated into the way we do our jobs.
“Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, often uses the example of a calculator – how is a calculator changing the way we solve math problems and teach math?
“It was actually integrated into the way we work pretty quickly; My expectation is this new tool – this ability to quickly generate text in a basic, fairly general, but logical way will become a part of how we work pretty quickly.”
There are already many examples of how ChatGPT and related technologies can be used by professionals:
· Authors can use it to create blogs, articles and informational materials.
· Teachers can use it to summarize lesson materials and create assignments.
· Finance professionals can automate accounting and reporting.
· Lawyers can use it to summarize case law and quickly develop an understanding of areas of law that they have not previously studied.
· Marketers can use it to create copywriting and sales emails.
· Customer service representatives can use it to generate responses to inquiries and compile FAQ documents on common problems.
· Healthcare professionals can use it to extract relevant information from medical records and exams, and to compile reports and summaries of patient data.
Expand your skills with new skills
But that’s just the beginning. Crucially, it allows professionals to expand their skillset to perform tasks that may be outside their ability or area of expertise.
For example, a data analyst may be good at drawing conclusions based on charts and statistics, but not good at writing them into reports for his peers. This is where Generative AI can step in, helping with day-to-day activities and allowing professionals to spend their time on tasks that are their strengths.
Conversely, an author can use his analytical skills to add statistics to his written work, even if he is not particularly good at statistical research and analysis himself.
A teacher can be fantastic at getting the best out of their students and encouraging them to reach their potential in exams, but they don’t enjoy creating lesson plans or designing study materials. They can use generative AI to fill in the gaps in their skills and become a well-rounded, capable professional.
And a computer programmer may instinctively know how to use their programming language of choice, but find it difficult to explain what their code does to a non-programmer. Generative AI can annotate code and create human-language explanations of what’s happening under the hood (and even spot bugs they may have missed).
As Allon puts it, “This will give these professionals the opportunity to do two things… first, be more efficient and effective, and have a broader scope. And second to [focus on] a higher level of cognitive tasks.”
An example comes from his earlier career at QuickBooks. Allon told me that once accountants had automated tools for routine tasks like transaction reconciliation, they could spend more time working directly with clients and developing their role as “trusted advisors” within their own organizations or with clients.
“The other point here,” he continues, “is the role we all play in our various fields… will continue to be crucial as ChatGPT usually offers a fairly general answer, and it’s always the case that you do.” complement that with a certain perspective or the right tone and style for your business, so I’m talking about that combination of ‘better together’.”
The way forward
So, in summary, there are three steps we need to consider if we want to transform into supercharged, AI-powered professionals. The first is to think about how AI can automate the routine and repetitive tasks we do every day.
Then we need to consider how it might expand our abilities and allow us to take on challenges we might have previously been at a loss about, or turn to others for help.
Last but not least, we need to think about how we can use the time we’ve gained by leveraging Generative AI to spend more time on truly human tasks. This means face-to-face time with clients, customers and colleagues, but also strategic tasks at a high level, creative tasks and work that requires us to develop really new ideas.
This step-by-step approach is a great way to minimize our chances of being left behind by the AI revolution that will transform the world of work, and ensure we’re in the best position to continue to add value.
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