Since the launch of San Francisco-based OpenAI in November, ChatGPT has taken the world by storm. The chatbot can code chat, write essays, and even act as a search engine, among other tasks.
But this is not some futuristic vision of what ChatGPT is will do. The business world is already bought into AI in general, and ChatGPT in particular.
“It can create anything that we thought was unique to human intelligence or creativity, whether that’s interacting with us in the form of a chatbot, whether that’s generating new content, whether that’s images , video it,” Nina Schick, consultant, speaker, and AI thought leader, recently told Yahoo Finance.
Some practical, real-life impacts – and caveats – by industry:
Health care
Even before the release of ChatGPT, the healthcare industry was already using chatbots to schedule appointments and evaluate symptoms. The arrival of OpenAI’s new sophisticated bot is expected to accelerate that trend, said Yair Lewis, MD, PHD, SVP of Medicine at Navina.
“Generative models have the potential to perform a wide range of tasks in healthcare,” he told Yahoo Finance. “They can revolutionize the way patients and clinicians interact and access information; they can provide up-to-date medical information; support clinical decision-making; and aid in medical documentation”
He added: “In addition, these models can be used in biomedical research such as rational molecule design, in-silico experimentation, and genomic analysis.”
For example, Doximity, a healthcare platform, has reportedly released a beta version of a ChatGPT tool that helps doctors with administrative tasks such as, for example, drafting appeal letters to insurers. Meanwhile, ChatGPT could also take on other roles historically filled by doctors, such as diagnosing garden-variety illnesses, the common cold or the flu. (Aside: the chatbot recently passed the US Medical Licensing Exam.)
There is a big “but,” according to Lewis: “The critical point is that ‘medical grade devices’, so to speak, should be clinically useful – these models need to be optimized for those specific tasks, and undergo extensive testing and validation,” he said.
Clinicians also need to be concerned about cybersecurity, said Deryck Mitchelson, area CISO at Check Point Technologies. “With email being one of the biggest attack vectors, it’s worth noting that using ChatGPT is very easy to create realistic phishing emails,” he said. that they are at risk of XYZ and it looks very realistic.”
Real Estate
In real estate, brokers are perhaps the most famous and immediate professional users of ChatGPT to date. The robot’s ability to write reasonably convincing home listings has been widely reported.
For State Street Realty VP broker Frank Trelles, based in Miami, Fla., the benefits of ChatGPT aren’t just theoretical. He regularly uses the bot for tasks such as calculating mortgage payments, analyzing investment markets, and drafting agreements. Trelles said technology can allow real estate brokers and agents to increase their focus on clients – not on the actual work of real estate transactions.
“I’m still testing it. And every time I do I’m always surprised. It’s amazing,” he said. In industries that rely on personal contact with customers, Trelles added, “I see ChatGPT not replacing us, but making us better.”
Public Relations & Marketing
ChatGPT is particularly suitable for tasks that involve a lot of copywriting. Dara Kaplan, president and partner at Wunderlich Kaplan Communications, said her firm has started using AI to speed up work on press releases, brand stories and client bios.
“We’re using AI technology to help us speed up the writing process,” Kaplan said.
Clients like it, Kaplan added.
“[Clients] sure, we’ve received hundreds of applications on launch day. Do they have questions? Definitely. However, that’s why we wrote an FAQ about exactly how it will work,” she said. “To be clear, AI helps us make the content creation process faster and more affordable for small businesses and for entrepreneurs.”
Wunderlich is not alone. Taboola, a web advertising company, recently announced that it would be experimenting with AI and is working on integrating ChatGPT into their platforms to help generate ads.
“We believe AI technologies will revolutionize the way advertisers create and optimize their ads to drive performance, providing them with the additional tools they need to succeed in the fast-paced world of online advertising,” a Adam Singolda, CEO and founder of Taboola said in a statement.
Customer service
Customer service, by its very nature, involves a lot of repetitive, often formulaic text. Forbes recently reported that Meta, Canva, and Shopify are all using ChatGPT technology to answer customer questions. The outlet also reported that Ada, a Toronto-based company that automates 4.5 billion customer service interactions, partnered with ChatGPT to further improve the technology.
“We’re continuing to use big language models to empower brands to deliver a much more contextual and intelligent customer experience,” Ada CEO and co-founder Mike Murchison said in a statement.
Media
And then, of course, there is the media. CNET, a technology journalism site, recently came under fire for using artificial intelligence to generate articles. The publication used AI to write pieces for months with little transparency, as reported by The Verge. Meanwhile, Neil Vogel, CEO of Dotdash Meredith, rival of CNET parent Red Ventures, told Axios that his site would never produce articles written by machines.
Still, he admitted: “We think it’s an incredible opportunity for us,” he said, noting that the company has already begun to bake AI into many of its workflows, such as imaging sourcing.
BuzzFeed also announced (BZFD) in a memo to its staff that it would be working with OpenAI to personalize content and improve its quizzes, according to The Wall Street Journal. On February 14, BuzzFeed launched its AI-powered quiz format, called Infinity Quizzes.
“ChatGPT has become the face of next generation AI,” Thomvest Ventures Principal Ashish Kakran told Yahoo Finance. “We’re really excited because it helped it move from the laboratory to the public imagination, where everyone can play with it… We think it’s going to have a long-term impact. It will have a fundamental impact on every function in every vertical and will affect how we work.”
Allie Garfinkle is a Senior Technical Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter at @agarfinks and on LinkedIn.
Dylan Croll is a reporter and researcher at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @CrollonPatrol.
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