ThinkTWENTY20

Since the public release of ChatGPT last November, there has been a great deal of discussion about how it might be used (and abused) in numerous fields, including marketing, journalism, education and business generally, to name a few. A recent article in InformationWeek met this issue head on and in a positive way by setting out eight ways in which ChatGPT can be used in business.

The first use was one we outlined in the Spring issue of ThinkTWENTY20 – document preparation. ChatGPT is very good at creating all sorts of documents, including sale and purchase agreements, proposals, invoices – and so on. They can be prepared seamlessly in seconds and by asking the right questions of the bot, in amazing detail. This use of ChatGPT can be a real time saver.

One of the areas where ChatGPT shines is in pulling together information from a variety of sources consisting of very large amounts of information. It can summarize that information and the summaries can be used for purposes such as speeches, presentations and, generally, background information for meeting preparation. It is also useful for scanning large amounts of information and pulling out key bits of information that are desired for a particular purpose. It might, for example, scan marriage records, and determine the average age of people married last year, the time of year and locations of the ceremonies.

It's important to note that ChatGPT is in its earlier stages of development and is developing quickly, through machine learning and other means. At this point it seems there is much potential for it to develop program code. This will improve quickly. And it will make it much easier for programmers to do their work on a timely basis.

People often need to develop content for social media and for website updates. Sometimes they don’t have the people resources to make it happen. ChatGPT can be a great way to quickly develop relevant content. Of course, it can always be edited.

Building out ideas is a great potential use for ChatGPT. For example, an idea might come out at a meeting on, say, marketing a new product. But it needs to be developed. A series of queries to ChatGPT can speed up this process and perhaps develop the idea into a viable work plan.

It is also useful for recruiters to develop job descriptions and by job-seekers in developing resumes.

Many of these uses involve saving time, and as with any time saving device, caution is in order. However, time is one of our most scarce resources, so efforts to save it are always worthwhile.

Check out the InformationWeek article here.