BY ANDREW AMANN
Arguably the first public-facing instance of AI to truly go viral, ChatGPT stands poised to revolutionize many aspects of the modern business world. While other use cases for AI continue to make an impact, especially in automation, this example of generative AI appears poised to take things to another level. Essentially a supercharged chatbot, ChatGPT boasts the ability to produce written content, including documentation, articles, and even prose.
Needless to say, generative AI has the potential to optimize a variety of corporate functions. These include new product ideation, project management, customer service, marketing and so much more. In fact, the possibilities seem limited only by the imagination of the user. Notably, instead of replacing the human workforce, it serves to make employees more productive and able to focus on more value-added tasks.
So let's take a high-level overview of how generative AI might transform your fledgling business. It might be ChatGPT, Google's Bard, or any of the other emerging apps using the natural language processing at the heart of similar AI-powered tools. The benefits of this technology innovation remain crucial for any entrepreneur to grasp.
An AI-powered creative assistant
As noted earlier, ChatGPT's natural language processing and generative features set it apart from other AI-powered tools. In fact, you might already boast some familiarity with the basic customer service chatbots being used today. Some securities firms even leverage automated trading bots that rely on machine learning. Expect something more transformative with generative AI.
Any entrepreneur has experience trying to brainstorm compelling new business ideas. ChatGPT helps optimize this ideation process crucial to any startup or other emerging business. As opposed to trusting the tool to generate these ideas without any human assistance, generative AI only serves to work in concert with your project team. You still need to vet each idea to see if it makes sense in addition to determining whether a relevant target market exists.
Still, when considering the fact that most startups struggle to find the funding to bootstrap their early operations, having a creative tool at the ready makes perfect sense. It might help your newly formed startup by authoring a draft of a job ad, a grant funding proposal or even a search for potential venture studio partners. Of course, you still need to work closely with the tool to verify its output, but this approach definitely adds value to any emerging business.
Other intriguing business use cases for generative AI
Needless to say, there is a myriad of interesting use cases for generative AI, including ChatGPT, Google Bard, and others. For example, generative AI helps marketing by producing drafts for ad copy, social media posts, press releases, and more. Other generative tools even create videos and music soundtracks, although their overall quality suffers at this early stage.
Since customer service served as an original use-case for chatbots, it stands to reason the higher quality of generative AI provides an even better experience to customers and clients. Expect future model enhancements to support specific industries and topics. With automated trading currently in use in the financial world, generative AI provides a significant improvement to this approach, especially in determining and supporting the specific needs of each customer.
The software development process already benefits from automation, especially at shops leveraging DevOps. Adding ChatGPT to the equation helps with code documentation, debugging, QA and more. Once again, this tool makes your developers more productive as opposed to replacing them. The importance of high-velocity software development to many startups definitely makes generative AI worthy of exploration.
The current limitations of ChatGPT and generative AI
It's also important to understand that ChatGPT and other generative AI tools rely on the initial input query. Even more critical is the underlying data used to train the machine learning model where it finds the answers to those questions. Like many other technology applications, it essentially works as a black box. As such, the quality of its output ultimately depends on the quality of the input, especially that critical machine learning model.
For example, ChatGPT's data model at the time of this writing only includes historical information up to 2021. So it's unable to tell you Argentina won the 2022 World Cup when asked. Early media reports from users of the tool are also filled with various inaccuracies or other biases generated by ChatGPT. Once again, it emphasizes the concept that generative AI remains a tool better framed as an assistant instead of something to replace your employees.
Even when considering those limitations, it remains obvious that generative AI provides startups with a myriad of advantages, especially in their earliest stages. Expect the benefits to continue to grow as the technology matures and the underlying machine-learning models consume more data.
The ability of this type of AI to eventually generate high-quality videos and other media also enhances the potential use cases. Needless to say, any entrepreneur needs to pay close attention to the latest news on generative AI and its most popular exponents like ChatGPT and potentially Google Bard. It just might be the special sauce your emerging business needs.
About Andrew Amann
Andrew Amann is CEO of NineTwoThree Venture Studio, a two-time Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company. Andrew and his team have created over 50 products and 14 startups, and they encompass the leading mobile development agency in Boston.
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