ChatGPT and Leadership

Part of the challenge in defining leadership is due to the fact that leadership is very contextual. The other reason is due to the evolving nature of leadership as society progresses. As an example, the pandemic significantly changed the workplace for many industries and the new working culture requires new way of thinking about leading an organization when remote working becomes the new norm.

With that context, I would like to bring you ChatGPT, the latest artificial intelligence product released to the public two weeks ago by OpenAI which is creating a storm in the industry. The attached screen shot from Linas Belunas’s post can give you a sense of how big this product has quickly become.

On the one hand, it is simply a more sophisticated version of Siri on your iPhone. On the other hand, this product has the feel of a tipping point with the potential to eventually transform how we work.

During my book writing process in the last few months, I was introduced to another AI based writing tool, Jasper, for generating human-like text which could conceptually help writers create paragraphs and stories. I was curious but did not really pay much attention. When my son, Daniel, brought ChatGPT to my attention a week ago, I registered an account and we tested out a few things on the platform. Here are the few things Daniel and I tried.

When we asked ChatGPT "what is leadership?", here was the answer:

Leadership is the ability to direct and guide a group of people in order to achieve a common goal. Effective leaders are able to inspire and motivate others to work together towards a shared vision, and they possess a range of skills and qualities such as communication, decision-making, and problem-solving. Leadership can take many forms, and can be exercised in a wide variety of settings, from business and government to sports and the arts. Ultimately, the most effective leaders are those who are able to foster a sense of teamwork and collaboration, and who are able to guide their team members towards success.

We followed up and asked "what is the most important challenges new leaders face?" here was the answer:

One of the most important challenges that new leaders face is the need to establish credibility and gain the trust and respect of their team members. This can be particularly challenging for new leaders who are young or inexperienced, or who are taking over a team that is used to working with someone else. Effective communication, consistent decision-making, and the ability to set clear goals and expectations can all help new leaders to establish credibility and earn the trust of their team.

Intrigued by the answers, I asked another follow up questions on "what does it take to be a great leader?". Here was the answer:

To be a great leader, it is important to possess a range of qualities and skills. These can include effective communication, the ability to motivate and inspire others, strong decision-making and problem-solving skills, and the ability to build and maintain positive relationships. Great leaders are also typically forward-thinking and strategic, with the ability to develop and implement plans and policies that will help their team or organization to achieve its goals. Additionally, great leaders are often adaptable and able to respond to changing circumstances, and they are able to stay calm and composed in challenging situations. Ultimately, the most successful leaders are those who are able to create a positive and productive work environment, and who are able to guide their team towards success.

The answers are not perfect. The statements tend to be tedious. However, all the answers are sufficiently credible and would have helped me during my writing process. There is no doubt that the outputs will become more coherent as the technology gets mature. Imagine all the possibilities you can have if you have an essay homework due in 30 minutes for a college class or a memo to your boss next day. Apparently, you can write poems, compose rap song, create video, write codes, create speeches mimicking the style of specific person. The possibility is endless. I have no idea about copyright issue or commercial rights but I suspect those issues are yet to be defined at this early stage.

Even more interestingly, it has a graphic interface: DALL-E. For those of you who have been following my book journey, you probably have seen the final cover design which is based on a photo I took at the Sand Dunes National Park. I ask ChatGPT to to create an image with the following inputs: "Sand dunes with two people walking on the zigzag path, black and white". The program generated the following four images in a few seconds for me to choose from. I am sure with some minor tweaking of the inputs, I could have generated something very similar to what I had in my photo to the right. I also used DALL-E to generate the cover graphic for this blog with a simple input of "Artificial intelligence and leadership".

However intelligent the computer might be, it does not truly “create", at least no yet. It provides answers based on the information the model was trained with. However, it does not mean computer can not be intelligent or smart. As some of you probably know, Deep Blue computer by IBM beat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997 for the very first time. AI has advanced to a point that no human on the planet can beat Alpha-Go from Google in the game of GO, a 19x19 board game. For a long time, it was widely held opinion that the GO game posed a problem fundamentally different from Chess and many thought beating world class human players was impossible or at least not in the foreseeable future.

With the fast advancement of Artificial Intelligence, it will likely result in new way of working including new ways of creating, new way of communication, new way of human-to-human interaction, new way of human-machine interaction. It might bring the world together in some way but farther apart in some other way. There is no doubt that the new world would need new perspective and new interpretation of leadership as well.

In my book, I discuss about the need for leaders to have vision but also be agile and adaptive which is crucial in order to inspire organization and people through changes by being ready to do what it takes to survive and thrive in fast-changing market circumstances.

We are living in an interesting time.

Related Article

The World is a Restless Place (11/07/2020)

Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894 (October 6, 2017)

(Please join the 279,000 subscribers to my newsletter by clicking the?subscribe?button on the top of the article to be notified of new editions, and visit my Leadership?website. Better yet, please join the conversation by sharing your comments. Thanks.)