ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence: The Road to Productivity or Path to Employee Obsolescence?
“We have built and now are training our obsolescence. We are training Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) to effectively take away our jobs, infiltrate the way we educate our future generations. If evolution has taught us anything it has taught us that survival is for the fittest.”
― Aysha Taryam
“As more boneheads use ChatGPT to cheat, worth of excellence will skyrocket globally.”
― Abhijit Naskar
ChatGPT is the hottest topic of conversation in the business realm and beyond. According to OpenAI, the tech company that designed the product, ChatGPT is a technology tool that utilizes “artificial intelligence trained to assist with a variety of tasks." When I heard this definition, I thought: “Assist with a variety of tasks. Hmm. It sounds like a human employee, sans human limitations. Could this be a manager’s dream come true? Or will this destroy entire sectors of the job market?”
I wondered if ChapGPT represents the axis of human and robot, or if it's simply replacing the human plane altogether. This technical service, powered by artificial intelligence (“AI”) indeed seems more human than artificial. ChatGPT was carefully designed to mimic a human-like manner of speech.
What can you ask ChatGPT to do? Nearly anything! With a few prompts from the user, it can write a cover letter. It can create a retirement announcement. It can design a logo for your business. It can compose a song. It does this by scraping the internet for similar results, aggregating the results, and mimicking an output similar to what a human would produce. It does this at an incredible speed, once given instruction from a human, such as: “Write country song lyrics about a well respected TD Bank manager named Linda from Kankakee, Illinois.” (Did you just stop to do this, reader? Did your jaw drop?)
Many predict it may heavily transform the future of work. It’s easy to see the advantages from a managerial perspective: ChatGPT can save employees time, which saves companies money. Employees may ask: but at what cost to me? Even tech experts have strong feelings about it. The former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, has warned that ChatGPT might present a threat to American democracy.
During WWII The Manhattan Project was the first time humans figured out a way to kill off their own species. What will advanced AI do? Psychologists are concerned about the negative effects that technology has on children, teenagers, and adults. A manager may wish for a flawless employee, but at what cost? People bring the sturm and drang of the human experience to their workplace. Might AI obliterate this?
Faced with my own doom-and-gloom attitude, I scolded myself: “Well, what’s the big fuss? Times change! The workplace will adapt. If I need butter for my kitchen, I don’t milk my cow and then reach for my butter churn. I buy it from a grocery store.” This has probably saved me several years of work over my lifetime.
As a management consultant, I’m excited about this leap forward in efficiency. As a people-focused coach, and as a human, I’m hesitant. Could there be a happy medium? I welcome your thoughts.