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Is OpenAI’s ChatGPT evidence of man’s creative and technical genius or a scourge upon creativity, artists and the soul of humanity? And how should Insightful Leaders respond?
That depends upon whom you ask and what reports you read. Either way, it’s an innovation businesses and entrepreneurs need to keep an eye on. As Jessica Mathews and Jeremy Kahn report for Fortune, Microsoft plans to invest $10 billion in OpenAI by the end of January. And that’s on top of $3 billion the tech giant already has spent bankrolling the startup that created ChatGPT.
OpenAI bills ChatGPT as a chatbot that can “answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.”
But its ability to generate human-like text, potentially making content generation a synthetic application instead of a human endeavor, has drawn praise and attacks.
A story by Business Insider’s Beatrice Nolan describes how San Francisco product-design manager Ammaar Reshi fed ChatGPT and Midjourney, an AI art generator, to write and illustrate a children’s book in 72 hours – despite his admittedly scant experience in writing or illustrating. He sold 841 copies before Amazon removed the book.
While Some Fight, Others Figure Out How to Use New Tech
Reshi received a lot of pushback on Twitter from artists who fear that AI programs generate content by reviewing and building upon previously published art – yet the original artists receive no credit or payment. They basically accused Reshi of theft, and he told Business Insider they do have valid concerns. For his part, Reshi said he wasn’t aiming to write a bestseller, just a children’s book for two of his kid’s playmates.
And many professors have raised the alarm, as numerous news reports have students already using ChatGPT to write essays. But in The New York Times, Kevin Roose argues that teachers should explored using ChatGPT as a teaching tool.
He cited one example where a high school English teacher in Oregon had her students use ChatGPT to write outlines for their essays before writing the actual essays in class, long hand, the old-fashioned way.
Beyond writing text, Forbes contributor Bernard Marr compiled a number of ways businesses could use the innovation behind ChatGPT, including compiling research, brainstorming ideas, writing computer code, translating text and interacting with customers.
No matter what, the ChatGPT genie is out of the bottle.
Jim Tompkins, Chairman of Tompkins Ventures, is an international authority on designing and implementing end-to-end supply chains. Over five decades, he has designed countless industrial facilities and supply chain solutions, enhancing the growth of numerous companies. He previously built Tompkins International from a backyard startup into an international consulting and implementation firm. Jim earned his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University.