The miracle of AI and the scary truth out there

This week I attended an APA Breakfast in Melbourne on the use of ChatGPT.

The presenter Anthony Wymond was brilliant by the way.

I walked away very excited about the future and what this tech can do for all of us.

Whilst I love this, I also have some concerns and points of caution.

Here’s some thoughts from my end...

AI is not a game changer

It’s a world changer!

Yet the awesome reality and the challenge coexist.

Welcome the great leveller, technology.

Those who are less skilled can quickly bring their standards up.

To a level that appears, at face value, to be adequate.

Those who are actually skilled might find they don’t need it… for now anyway.

Yet each day they may fall a little bit behind in a rapidly moving space.

But the industry level problems run deeper.

Using AI models such as ChatGPT can only take you so far.

And for the majority of your consumers, the place it takes you to is not that big a problem.

But over time, it can become more problematic.

A word of warning

The truth is a lot of the content from ChatGPT should not be making it onto the public facing side of your business.

You can happily use it internally to help with meeting notes, or even to help you write your own notes.

But I wouldn’t be using it as the sole source of my website content and the reasons why are discussed below.

We must take on some of these challenges with our eyes open.

Chances are your staff are already using ChatGPT to reply to your emails, that's fine per se.

But what else might they be doing?

Because there is one thing we ought to take very seriously, and that is how we manage our patient's data.

In the not too distant future, rules around health data and privacy will continue to be refined.

They may offer further protections, or the barriers may be dropped.

There are times to be an early adopter and there are times to wait and see.

And there’s a balance to walk right now.

I personally would take an abundance of caution here.

Especially with any client related information that is potentially being shared with third parties.

ie. Don’t put client related or easily identifiable information anywhere near ChatGPT.

This may sound obvious, but I've been an owner too.

And obvious doesn't always equal what gets done.

I'd say it's worth discussing these 'obvious' things in team meetings to ensure all your staff are on the same page.

Are you falling behind here?

With that said, if you are not using ChatGPT in some way, shape or form on a regular basis, you will fall behind.

Because using ChatGPT is a skill in its own right.

And one worth investing 100’s of hours in to truly harness its efficiencies.

I’d say almost any task you undertake, you could leverage this technology in some way, shape or form.

Here are 4 common ways I use ChatGPT in my business.

1. Daily - idea generation AND content iteration (see pic)
2. Daily - problem solving - before I Google, I thrash out the problem with ChatGPT, this often helps with either an easy answer, or leads me to Google or more-often than not nowadays, Youtube.
3. Weekly - content iteration - I usually run my drafts through ChatGPT to get a ‘pulse check’ by asking it to unpick my arguments
4. Weekly - creating summaries - from my long form content, especially video scripts I’ll often ask ChatGPT to summarise it don’t into a one-pager or a take-home message

Whilst I use it regularly, here’s what I don’t do.

I don’t use ChatGPT to write my content NOR my scripts.

I don’t value what it produces.

It doesn’t write with genuine authority.

It is very much faking it.

Much like a 19 year old intern with no actual experience would do.

Same, same... but different

The biggest macro (physio industry level) challenge I see for us is homogenisation.

At a micro level, ie a single practice, putting AI generated content on your website doesn’t cause that many issues.

But what happens when that same information is littered across the internet.

Consistent spiels of fluffy content on every website.

Especially if it’s inaccurate.

The issue with scalability is errors get scaled too.

Fake references are a big issues within AI hallucinations.

Conceptual ideas that don’t actually stack up to a professional standard.

Any decent expert in the field would spot this a mile away.

And we each have a responsibility to ensure that we represent our own profession appropriately.

Our training, which costs a lot to acquire, is valuable.

And so too is our knowledge, which takes even longer to accrue.

Those are two areas that we shouldn’t look to outsource too quickly.

Final takeaways

Should you wish to clarify, challenge, contest your own thoughts.

ChatGPT is a great resource for this.

If you want to learn how to code to fix something on your own webpage.

Again, use the AI.

If you want to…

But I think your content, your brand especially, deserves better.

These are extremely precious things.

It’s more than just your intellectual property.

It’s the mark you are going to leave on the world.

I wouldn’t be outsourcing that to a chatbot.

Creating Diverse Physio Practices

Shane Guna

PS. Looking for ways to improve your business or make things more efficient?

Perhaps it’s time we had a chat.