Is ChatGPT a Catalyst for Innovation?

AI Driven Business Process Innovation

(This article appeared in the ACT-IAC Innovation Newsletter published June 6, 2023) #innovation #chatgpt #businessprocess #solutionsales #solutionsarchitect #cloud #designthinking #problemsolving #federalcontracting #creativethinking #knowledgeworkers

About two years ago I started writing about business model innovation and the ways we can create an operational environment to promote creativity, problem solving, and deliver on the mission. I touched upon such topics as data, first principles of design, and ways to better formulate strategies to achieve mission outcome. The underlying theme about everything I write is the need to ask insightful and probing questions for which there may not be immediate answers. All too often we attempt to solve problems by getting the best answers and best technology but not necessarily by asking the right questions and therefore not solving the core problem. This then brings me to AI as it may be applied in the Federal civilian government to deliver citizen services. Advances in natural language processing, deep learning, computer vision and other AI tools have made it easier and more convenient to get answers much faster than to understand the actual problem.

What I find intriguing about AI, in its many forms, is that unlike past innovations that changed operating models and eliminated certain repetitive manual and administrative work this new AI wave will hit the knowledge worker the hardest. I define knowledge workers across all industries and government as the staff who support decision making, data analyses, and who provide business acumen and technical insight by leveraging their education, acquired life skills, and experience. We were technology and data consumers and leveraged tools to analyze and synthesize data into information for others to understand and make decisions. In other words, we as knowledge workers still had a role to play because deriving insights and communicating results were unique intellectual skills. No longer.

Knowledge workers (including myself) will derive both great benefits and also face stiff career challenges from OpenAI algorithms like ChatGPT. What ChatGPT has demonstrated so far is that a question asked of Google or Bing that took some thoughtful time to research, analyze, verify, and synthesize can now be answered relatively reliably and in a perfect narrative in a few seconds within reach of a mobile device. Position papers and even speeches can be crafted via AI and communicated expertly. Algorithms may soon be able to review Request for Proposals (RFP’S) and automatically prepare written responses. Algorithms have computational powers, and they too work from their home offices somewhere in the cloud and don’t require personal engagement and in person collaboration. We just don’t have to think as hard as we did prior to the Internet and prior to ChatGPT. We can depend on algorithms to do the thinking for us.

The NLP algorithms are now so powerful in scanning, extracting, synthesizing, and preparing informative answers based upon an existing knowledge base. But what they can’t do, for now, is define a problem, and create a new product, tool, or service on their own. There is still a need for the knowledge worker to think, ask questions, imagine, discover, and leverage these powerful AI tools for business process innovation. AI is a tremendous enabler for the knowledge worker who can ask questions, engage in collaboration, and imagine broader possibilities through diversity of human thinking.

Avi Bender is the Managing Director of Bender Advisory Services LLC. Avi was formerly the Director of NTIS US Department of Commerce, the first CTO of the US Census Bureau, and the Director for Enterprise Architecture at the IRS.