To be a disruptive technology, ChatGPT needs to change people’s behavior
I often hear the term disruptive technology. Lately it has been mentioned in connection with ChatGPT. But the reality is that disruption is not about technology. It is more about changing consumer or user behavior and markets, by creating a new equilibrium. It’s about answering questions like how will the market change if something is successful, and will it create undeniable value?
To test this idea, let’s look at another technology, blockchain. People keep saying blockchain is a disruptive technology, but there aren’t many actual use cases that have changed consumer behavior or the market balance for financial services to date. When markets are disrupted, one or more companies disappear. Which large company have we seen disappear because of blockchain?
Same with GPS. GPS technology is not about navigation or avoiding traffic jams. This technology is about location. The GPS antenna and chipset receive satellite signals and determine the location based on this. Navigation and apps like Waze came later use cases of the GPS technology, which became publicly available more than 20 years ago.
ChatGPT may create opportunity, but the actual use case has yet to be revealed, and the fact that people are trying it out for so many different uses suggests that we will soon find a significant use case, or that it will disappear as quickly as it turned out.
To investigate this question, I asked chatGPT to explain why it is disruptive. These were the results (which, by the way, I can regenerate and get different texts saying the same thing).
“OpenAI’s Generative Pretrained Transformer (GPT) has revolutionized Natural Language Processing (NLP) by presenting a language model capable of generating human-like text. With the introduction of GPT-3, chatbots and conversational AI have become more sophisticated and human, disrupting the traditional customer service and marketing landscape.
● Improving customer service: ChatGPT has enabled businesses to provide 24/7 customer support through conversational AI-driven chatbots. These chatbots can handle simple questions and complaints, reducing the burden on support staff and improving the overall customer experience. Marketing Automation: ChatGPT can be used to automate personalized marketing and sales campaigns by analyzing consumer data and making highly targeted recommendations. This can lead to more customer engagement and improved conversion rates. Content Generation: ChatGPT can generate high-quality articles, blog posts, and social media posts, freeing up valuable time for content creators and marketers to focus on other tasks.
● Help with research: ChatGPT can help researchers and analysts by collecting and organizing data, even summarizing it in an easily digestible format. Language Translation: ChatGPT’s language capabilities can be used to develop real-time translation services, break down language barriers and improve communication between people from different countries and backgrounds.
In conclusion, ChatGPT’s disruptive potential is evident in the way it transforms industries and improves various business processes. As NLP technology continues to evolve, ChatGPT is expected to continue to play an important role in shaping the future of AI and its applications.”
Reading this story can lead you to a few conclusions:
● This is way too generic
● I agree with most, it could create a much better customer service bot, especially if the historical data is used to train the system
● There is nothing here that will dramatically change behavior
If you haven’t tried it yet, I suggest the following experiment: choose the first two positions in your career. In my case, it would be a software engineer in the IDF Unit 8200 and a software engineer at Comverse Technology, each for about five years, and ask ChatGPT to prepare your resume. Now read it three times and ask yourself a question after each time:
● What is your first impression – it’s probably ‘WOW’
● Assuming you were sending this resume to apply for a position – can you defend the resume in an interview – probably, yes
● Is that really you at your core? Does it read like you? – most likely, no
Being too generic might mean you can talk or write the text in the case of ChatGPT, but that doesn’t mean you can walk the walk. You may have a decent resume in front of you. But does it capture your individual essence above and beyond the black-and-white description of your professional roles and competencies? In other words, you may recognize the content of the resume, but do you recognize yourself in it?
Let me suggest a different point of view, if the younger generation will approach ChatGPT as their go-to search engine instead of say Google, then we are looking at a major change in user behavior. It means less searches on Google and this would of course be painful for them as it affects their core business. So as the younger generation matures and the ChatGPT becomes the de facto standard, this is a change in the market equilibrium!
If you want to use ChatGPT to dramatically improve the services you provide, make sure it is properly trained with your relevant data. Otherwise, you won’t end up delivering real value with strung words that yes, read as complete grammatically correct sentences, but end up providing an even more frustrating customer experience than before.
In other very human words, although I am fully aware that with my final verdict I can simply be written off as a neo-Luddite or a Heidegger follower, ChatGPT technology can be useful, it can streamline, save us time and make us more efficient. , but are we at risk of losing our unique, distinctive, idiosyncratic selves?
