Released On 29th Jun 2023
ChatGPT is a tool, not a threat
Last night I attended a digitally themed networking event, and the main topic was of course AI & ChatGPT. Noticeably there was a real divide in the room between those who were excited for the new technology and those who were fearful of the impact of the new technology will have on the viability of entire teams roles within their company/industry.
One side heralds it as the ultimate weapon in day to day business use; producing blog posts, social media captions and email newsletter almost instantly. It can be used for effective (if not slightly outdated) market research and provide insight into customer sentiment if given the data to do so. It can write and streamline code for tech organisation based on simple inputs. Plug-ins for it can even allow it to perform the role of customer support, through intelligent chatbots to take a role that was once monopolised by humans.
Others perceive AI models such as ChatGPT as serious threat to the their jobs, they fear redundancy as this powerful technology increasingly perform larger portions of their roles. Many suffer from a sense of guilt when using it as if the use of the tool in itself makes their role less valuable.
But ChatGPT is just that, a tool.
Ever since the creation of the printing press, famously making scribes and manuscript copyists largely redundant, workers in all roles have feared that the next disruptive technology will cause there job role to become redundant. In reality, this is only the case for those individuals and organisations who were not dynamic enough to take full advantage of the benefits of the new technology.
Look to the case study of Kodak, once a dominant player in the photography industry. Kodak discovered the digital camera long before it became mainstream, but chose to neglect the disruptive technology in favour of their far more profitable film- based business model - fearing a digital camera line would cannibalise their more profitable product line. This allowed for competitors such Nikon and Sony to take dominance in the emerging digital camera space, marginalising Kodak who eventually filed for bankruptcy in 2012.
The lesson for businesses everywhere from the Kodak case study is this - you must recognise and embrace disruptive technologies. Employers who care for their employees and wish for them to maintain their value to their organisation should embrace the new technology, learn about it, train them on it, uproot inefficient legacy systems/processes and develop a strategy for how it can be effectively integrated into their daily life to best benefit there customers needs. To do otherwise is not only trying to swim upstream, but is also give your competitors a key technological advantage.
Perhaps the key take away that marketers should take away from this, "You are not competing with ChatGPT, you are competing with other businesses using ChatGPT".