IBM’s CEO predicted AI impact – citing a potential 30% impact on the company’s own back office. Other leaders have not been as explicit about using AI to cut jobs.
Geoffrey Hinton, the machine-learning pioneer sometimes called “the godfather of AI,” says he left Google to speak freely about the dangers of rushing AI products. His immediate concern is that the internet will be flooded with false text, and the average person will “not be able to know what is true anymore.” He also worries that A.I. technologies will, in time, upend the job market.
Those executives are looking — more than two-thirds of executives say the benefits of implementing generative AI outweigh the potential risks, according to a Gartner report published Wednesday.
Seven in 10 executives say their companies are investigating or exploring generative AI, while 19% have advanced pilots or are in production. The firm surveyed over 2,500 executives during a webinar series in March and April.
While the cost-cutting and efficiency upsides of generative AI have made headlines, the top driver for enterprise adoption is customer experience, according to 38% of respondents. Just 17% are deploying the technology focused on cost optimization.
And a first victim of ChatGPT hype – Chegg, the online education firm, who said on Monday that the chatbot was hurting its new customer growth rate and saw a 48% stock dip.
ChatGPT-like conversations may be coming to Alexa – in a leaked document seen by Insider, Amazon is planning a reboot, a goal of making Alexa smarter, saying users should feel “like Alexa is thinking vs. fetching from a database.”. This will be done with a large homegrown language model.
Skill with ChatGPT is in serious demand — the top global tech skill for businesses in the first quarter of 2023 was ChatGPT, which experienced a 4,419% increase in global topic consumption from the fourth quarter of 2022. Other AI-focused skills, such as Azure Machine Learning (281%) and AI art generation (239%), also significantly increased, landing them in the top 10 global tech skills. From Udemy’s Global Workplace Learning Index
And in surprising business use cases, Zillow’s integration via a plugin with ChatGPT was announced. Those using the plugin can tell ChatGPT what kind of property they want to purchase or rent, sharing criteria like location, price, and bedroom count. ChatGPT will dive into Zillow’s database and spit out some options for you.
Doctors, too, should be considering the impact, as 45% of ChatGPT responses to patients graded as “empathetic” or “very empathetic,” according to a study from the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, the Wall Street Journal reported. Just 4.6% of responses posted to r/AskDocs on Reddit by actual physicians received the same grades.
In scary use cases, Palantir is launching the Palantir Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), software meant to run large language models like GPT-4 and alternatives on private networks. In the pitch video, the operator uses a ChatGPT-style chatbot to order drone reconnaissance, generate several plans of attack, and organize the jamming of enemy communications.
Why do we care?
One of my Patreon supporters commented on how worrying Hinton’s comments were. I get that concern, although I’ll observe that these people created the technology, and I’m looking for answers more than concerns.
The genie is out of the bottle – the internet WILL be filled with false text at a grander scale than we see now. And, as IBM’s CEO notes, we’re in for a disruption. Solutions will go further than concerns… and I see this as an opportunity. Those pilot projects are in flight now; if your customers aren’t considering it, they’re already behind.
