BY PETER COHAN, FOUNDER
PETER S. COHAN & ASSOCIATES@PETERCOHAN
Generative A.I. can help your business if you use it in the right way. If you have a big budget to pay for building a GAI application tailored to your unique business requirements--such as providing customer service--you can cut your costs and boost your productivity.
If you want to use free chatbots, you can use ChatGPT and its rivals to boost your productivity by letting the computer write a first draft of a memo or a strategic analysis.
Be wary of thinking that draft is a final product. If you make that mistake, you could be in big trouble, because chatbots are not based on the most recent information, they do not cite their sources, and they sometimes pass off fiction as fact--dubbed hallucinations.
Here are four things you should do to get the most benefit from ChatGPT while minimizing the risks.
1. Protect yourself against chatbot inaccuracies.
Chatbots can make mistakes. Therefore, users must invest the time to assess the truth of the answers they provide.
According to The Boston Globe, you can protect yourself by double-checking ChatGPT's response to your prompt. In addition, you should ask the same question to more than one chatbot and see whether the answers are substantially the same.
2. Include context in your ChatGPT prompt.
When you type your prompt into ChatGPT, provide context for your question. If you don't feel satisfied with the answer, ask follow-up questions--generative A.I. systems remember your previous prompts.
For example, "Rather than asking ChatGPT, for example, to just write a tweet about why one brand of headphones is better than another, try teeing it up with some context," the Globe noted.
Here's an example: "You're a passionate music producer. Your favorite headphones are Sony WH-1000XM4s. Write a 280-character tweet on why these are better than Apple AirPods."
As the Globe reported, ChatGPT responded as follows: "As a passionate music producer, Sony WH-1000XM4s are my go-to headphones! They deliver an immersive audio experience with exceptional sound quality and powerful bass. The noise cancellation is top-notch, allowing me to focus on every beat. Sorry, AirPods, but these cans take the crown!"
3. Don't provide proprietary information.
Chatbots use the information you provide to train themselves. There's probably no way to delete the information you type into ChatGPT, so avoid sharing any personal information or company confidential data, the Globe advised.
4. Treat ChatGPT's response as a rough draft, not a final product.
Finally, do not present the results of your ChatGPT session as your final work product.
As I wrote on July 9, a case in point is "a lawyer who wrote a legal brief using ChatGPT only to be humiliated by a Manhattan judge who asked him to explain why his brief cited cases that ChatGPT had invented from whole cloth."
To avoid inadvertent plagiarism, it's wisest to treat A.I.-generated writing as a rough draft rather than a final product, Ron N. Dreben, a partner at Morgan Lewis, told the Globe.
If you do these four things, you can safely experiment with many ways to boost your productivity using generative A.I. chatbots.
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