ChatGPT poses a business-critical threat and a culture-defining opportunity

ChatGPT is an example of a Large Language Model (LLM), known colloquially as an A.I. chatbot or virtual assistant. There are others, but ChatGPT is the one everyone’s talking about, with over 100 million active users¹.

To catch up the few readers who may not be familiar with the likes of ChatGPT, chatting to a LLM feels just like having a text-based conversation with the most highly-informed (and widely-informed) person you could ever hope to meet.

Which opens it up for use in scores of business situations: from coding to copywriting, the use cases are vast and varied. A recent Forbes article² lists 27 ways colleagues could be using ChatGPT in your business right now, and that’s just scratching the surface.

Damned if you do

Uncontrolled, ChatGPT poses a business-critical threat to your organisation. A few examples:

• Your intellectual property is vulnerable. ChatGPT monitors and learns from user input, remembers conversations, and there’s a concern that confidential information entered as prompts could be used as outputs for the other 100 Million+ users³.
• It has a tendency to make stuff up. Great if you’re using it for creative writing, but a reputational risk in the vast majority of business contexts, plus it could lead to incorrect decision making.
• It’s biased. Like anything, it’s only as good as the information it’s trained on, and while the trillions of data points make it the highly sophisticated tool that it is, they’re produced by humans who are inherently and unavoidably biased, which often shows.
• It’s outdated. The knowledge cut-off is September 2021, so it’s not privy to any advancements or changes since then.

Damned if you don’t

A blanket ban would be cutting off your nose to spite your face. 72% of business leaders anticipate adopting generative A.I. within the next three years to make colleagues more productive⁴. And just 5% of executives believe the risks of A.I. outweigh the benefits⁵.

In short, if you’re not embracing LLMs, you’re falling behind your competition.

The reality is that ChatGPT is proving to be an invaluable tool: 30% of professionals have tried ChatGPT⁶, and some workers claim they secretly use it to do 80% of their jobs⁷. It’s so invaluable that your colleagues are likely to continue using it, with or without the backing of your organisation – the reported figure is that 70% of workers using ChatGPT haven’t told their bosses⁸.

The best way forward, therefore, is to embrace the technology in a secure and controlled manner.

So take control

And the good news is that it’s possible to create your own chatbot that:

• is fine-tuned to deliver more fit-for-purpose results;
• is trained on your up-to-date business-specific and context-specific information;
• protects your intellectual property;
• doesn’t get ‘creative’ with the truth;
• reduces bias; and
• complies with UNESCO’s ethical recommendations on the use of A.I.

An unparalleled cultural opportunity

More than that, we see this as a tool that has the potential to be highly influential on your organisational culture. After all, the way we talk about things influences the way we think about things and the way we do things. And the influence of LLMs is undeniable; increasingly, ChatGPT users are reporting that they find themselves adopting its mannerisms and patterns of speech.

Which makes this an opportunity to give all colleagues access to a role-model approach to communicating, thinking, and working; an opportunity to make this an extension of your brand character, personality, and expression; an opportunity to connect colleagues naturally and seamlessly to your purpose and values, globally.

Corporate Culture delivers

That’s where our 35+ years of culture, strategy, and behavioural science expertise comes into play:

• To embed your culture, you first need to define it – and we can help refresh your cultural statements and articulations.
• To deliver fit-for-purpose solutions, you first need to learn for what purposes your colleagues are already using LLMs – and we can use our survey and mobile ethnography techniques to help you achieve that.
• To design and build a chatbot that delivers honest, ethical results securely, and appropriate to your context-specific cultural goals, you need to know how – and we’ve developed and been using our own in-house chatbots for a while now and would be more than happy to demonstrate the difference our prompt-engineering makes in action.
• To find out the effect your tailor-made chatbots are having on your culture, you need to track impact over time – and we’re developing a culture diagnostic tool that will achieve exactly that.

Wherever you are on your A.I. chatbot journey, we can help you deliver results. Continue the conversation by giving me a call on 0845 607 0000, or emailing andrew.drummond@corporateculture.co.uk

References:

1. Reuters. (2023, February). Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-sets-record-fastest-growing-user-base-analyst-note-2023-02-01/
2. Forbes. (2023, February). Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2023/02/16/on-crm-27-ways-to-use-chatgpt-in-your-business-right-now/?sh=22cb2d257f69
3. Scribbr. (2023, May). Retrieved from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/using-ai-tools/is-chatgpt-safe/
4. Staffing Industry. (2023, June). Retrieved from https://www2.staffingindustry.com/Editorial/Daily-News/Three-quarters-of-business-leaders-anticipate-adopting-generative-AI-within-the-next-three-years-65957
5. Gartner. (2023, May). Retrieved from https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-05-03-gartner-poll-finds-45-percent-of-executives-say-chatgpt-has-prompted-an-increase-in-ai-investment#:~:text=Executives%20Say%20Benefits%20of%20Generative,their%20perspective%20as%20investments%20
6. Time. (2023, January). Retrieved from https://time.com/6248707/survey-chatgpt-ai-use-at-work/
7. Mail Online. (2023, April). Retrieved from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11967947/Meet-workers-using-ChatGPT-multiple-time-jobs-employers-NO-idea.html
8. Business Today. (2023, March). Retrieved from https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/does-your-boss-know-70-of-employees-are-using-chatgpt-other-ai-tools-without-employers-knowledge-374364-2023-03-22