How ChatGPT can take your career to the next level

Generative AI is causing a lot of buzz right now. The ability of tools like ChatGPT and Dall-E 2 to go from simple prompts to generate text and images to standards that are often passable for humans means everyone is wondering what this technology means for the future of work. Instead of making humans redundant, professionals are learning to use them to supercharge their work, automating everyday tasks to make their work faster and more efficient.

However, it is important to remember that AI is not, and may never be, a replacement for human intelligence. Understanding this means learning its limits and recognizing situations where human skills, knowledge, judgment and creativity are still essential.

Learning how to use this powerful new technology to increase our skills while freeing up time to focus on more challenging, higher-value tasks will be a key skill for many professionals in the age of AI.

First of all, what is ChatGPT?

For those of you who haven’t tried or even heard of ChatGPT, first of all, what is it like to live on Mars? Second, the Cliff’s Notes version is a conversational interface (or chatbot) that understands and produces human language. Think Alexa or Siri but much more advanced and able to handle much more complex questions and answers.

It is an example of “creative AI” because it can use existing data to create new output, from poetry and fiction to emails, essays, blog posts, and even computer code. ChatGPT was created by Open AI, which is funded by technology and venture capital firms, most notably Microsoft, who recently invested $10 billion and are integrating it into the Bing search engine. To get a bit more technical, ChatGPT itself is actually a user interface (UI) for OpenAI’s large language model called GPT-3. It was trained on a dataset of over 175 billion pieces of information, including web pages, books, and articles in multiple languages.

How can professionals enhance their skills with ChatGPT and creative AI?

A recent guest on my webinar was Dominic Allon, CEO of cloud CRM solutions provider Pipedrive. Discussing how professionals and businesses will integrate creative AI into their work, he told me, “It’s helpful how the previous [technological advancements] they have been incorporated into the way of doing work.

“Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, often uses the example of a calculator: How does a calculator change the way we solve math problems and teach math?

“Actually, it was quickly integrated into our way of working; My hope is that with this new tool, this ability to quickly generate text in a basic, fairly generic but logical way will be incorporated pretty quickly into the way we work.”

There are already many examples of how ChatGPT and related technologies are being used by professionals:

· Writers can use it to create blogs, articles and informative material.

· Teachers can use it to summarize educational material and create assignments.

· Financial professionals can automate accounting and reporting.

· Lawyers can use it to summarize case law and quickly develop an understanding of areas of law they have not previously studied.

· Marketers can use it to create ad copy and sales emails.

· Customer service agents can use it to generate responses to inquiries and compile frequently asked questions on frequently asked topics.

· Healthcare professionals can use it to extract relevant information from medical records and examinations and compile reports and summaries of patient data.

Increase your skills with new abilities

But that’s just the beginning. Crucially, professionals can use it to enhance their skills to perform tasks that may be outside of their skill set or area of ​​expertise.

For example, a data analyst may be good at drawing conclusions based on graphs and statistics, but not good at writing reports for colleagues. This is where creative AI can come in, lending a hand to day-to-day activities and allowing professionals to spend time on tasks that are their strengths.

Conversely, a writer can use their analytical skills to augment their written work with statistics, even if they are not great at statistical research and analysis.

A teacher may be great at getting the best out of students and encouraging them to reach their potential in exams, but not at enjoying the process of creating lesson plans or designing learning materials. They can employ creative AI to fill gaps in their skill set and become a more well-rounded and capable professional.

And a computer programmer may instinctively know how to use their chosen programming language, but it will be difficult to explain to a non-coder what their code is doing. The AI ​​creator can annotate the code and generate human-language explanations of what’s going on under the hood (and even spot bugs they might miss).

As Allon says, “What this will do is free those professionals to do two things…first, to be more efficient and effective and to have a wider scope of work. And secondly [focus on] higher level of cognitive tasks.’

An example comes from my previous career in QuickBooks. Allon told me that once automated tools are in place to handle mundane tasks like transaction reconciliation, accountants have been able to spend more time working directly with clients and developing as “trusted advisors” within their own organizations or with clients.

“The other point here,” he continues, “is the role that we all play in our different fields… it will continue to be critically important, because usually ChatGPT will provide a fairly generic answer, and you’re always going to need it. Augment that with some perspective. , or with the right tone and style of your company, so for me it’s about this combination of ‘better together’”.

The Way Forward

So, in summary, there are three steps we need to consider if we want to supercharge ourselves and turn ourselves into AI-augmented professionals. The first is thinking about how AI can automate the routine and repetitive things we do every day.

Then, we need to consider how we can expand our abilities and how we might previously be overwhelmed by challenges or turn to others for help.

Last, but by no means least, we need to think about how we can use the time we’ve freed up by leveraging creative AI to spend more time on real human tasks. This means face-to-face time with clients, customers and colleagues, as well as high-level strategic tasks, creative work and work that requires us to come up with truly new ideas.

Taking this step by step is a great way to reduce the chances of being left behind by the AI ​​revolution in transforming the world of work and ensure we are in the best position to continue adding value.

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