Synthesis : Intelligence v/s Artificial Intelligence – BOT is it ?

It’s been commonly heard these days that unless you’ve been living under a rock (and a very large one at that) you’ve seen the hype waves from ChatGPT hitting every industry thought leader, and influencer.

The hype seems rather real and so is the fact that ChatGPT has proven to every business leader that one needs to take the advances in artificial intelligence very seriously. This is especially true for the tech giants, who are seeing the sands shift beneath their feet in ways that they haven’t had to contend with since the rise of smartphones.

The development in Artificial Intelligence (AI), whether via the release of GPT 4 or commercial launch of Bard by Google, is evolving rapidly and we will continue to see new variants for a foreseeable time. ChatGPT hit 1 million users in five days of being available!

However, a factual error by Bard AI chatbot during its demonstration did cost $100 bn in market capitalisation to Google’s parent Alphabet and the employees working on the project - their jobs!

The fallout from Bard’s exoplanet mishap wasn’t just about that singular error - it raised questions about how we will be able to integrate these models into practical applications and business critical systems. It’s a dream to have a system that intelligently feeds you the correct answers to questions with instant knowledge and context over internet-sized surface areas, but it’s a nightmare that these systems might hallucinate a fake answer as easily as give you a real one.

According to Forbes Advisor, a staggering 97% of business owners believe that ChatGPT will benefit their businesses.

Over 60% of business owners believe AI will increase productivity. Specifically, 64% stated that AI would improve business productivity, and 42% believe it will streamline job processes.

Given the hype surrounding the product and apparently visible benefits as per certain LinkedIn influencers, we decided to put it to use and see what benefits we (and by extension, the PE/ VC investment community) could derive from it. Taking baby steps, we used it for industry research to see where it would lead us from there.

With our limited usage, we could crisply summarise that:

1. Do Not use it for the information that would serve as the basis for your decision making,

2. Use it for getting started with the topic you have no idea about and then abort it!

We have been an active investor in the B2B SaaS domain. While we are always learning, exploring and experimenting with new ideas, with a couple of successful portfolio investment experiences like LeadSquared and Ozonetel, we would know a thing or two about how this industry works. When asked some specific questions around financials of the competing companies, ChatGPT either did not have the data because its directory can provide information only till September 2021 nor it could provide a verifiable source for whatever data it produced. Both the aspects – the recency and the source to verify the trustworthiness are essential for any investment decision making. More so, ChatGPT would give you generic answers that have been transferred from one generation to the next like folklore.

As such, it feels less of artificial intelligence but more of human intelligence that has been assimilated in one place.

Nevertheless, even the accumulation of human intelligence at one place that is available to you, at your fingertips, is a useful proposition. If one understands its limitations and asks the right questions, one could derive tangible benefits. The essential problem any professional faces, while looking at a completely new segment, is ‘where to start from’. In such circumstances, ChatGPT or any other AI based Large Language Model (LLM), could help with is provide initial guidance.

The technologies are ever evolving and especially the large language model’s progress based on community usage. Such models are absorbing new information, getting trained on a continuous basis, and as the systems become more efficient, perhaps a day would come when it could prepare important business memos and take decisions basis preliminary information provided to it.

But one thing seems certain – the ability to assess people and the ability to understand the circumstances and adapt to the environment using a combination of several cognitive processes, is what ChatGPT can never take from us.

Such is the ability that will enable us to stay relevant.