How Canadian Businesses Can Use AI Like ChatGPT in 2023

Humans have made giant leaps in the field of Artificial Intelligence. What once belonged between the pages of sci-fi novels quickly became part of our everyday reality. From self-driving cars to home appliances, our lives are increasingly influenced by our relationship with programmable machines. It's no longer ridiculous to call AI the next step in our evolution.

The most recent development in this direction is the seemingly sentient chatbot named ChatGPT. When showcased, the technology demonstrated an unnatural ability to come up with convincing answers, hold a conversation, ask follow-up questions and understand the context. It naturally led to much speculation about its legitimacy and application in many aspects of our lives, including businesses and creative fields. So, is ChatGPT all that it is hyped up to be? And can Canadian businesses profit from its use?

To answer that question, we need to dial back to what ChatGPT is and the concepts surrounding it.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer. According to its developers OpenAI, ChatGPT is an AI model that interacts conversationally and can answer follow-up questions, admit mistakes, challenge premises and reject requests within a dialogue.

It was released to the public in November 2022 as a revolutionary take on chatbots. While it's still far from a polished final product, it showcased the possibilities within AI and machine learning with many examples of ChatGPT producing everything from computer codes to college essays and human-like responses.

What is AI?

Artificial intelligence is a machine's capacity to make decisions and solve problems logically. Something like ChatGPT can be classed as an AI due to its ability to make seemingly logical decisions with minimal human input.

What is Machine Learning?

Machine learning is a machine's capacity to predict and learn patterns in data for problem-solving. The machine is programmed to use historical data to achieve increasingly optimal results. It can be simplified to a machine's ability to learn independently.

In the case of ChatGPT, it observes patterns from datasets of human conversations in semi-supervised training models and applies this learning when prompted by a user.

Generative AI?

ChatGPT falls under the category of Generative AI. Generative Artificial Intelligence uses an algorithm to generate new content, be it art, audio, code, videos or simulations.

Controversially, an AI's almost indistinguishable resemblance to human works has already generated many interesting debates in the art world, questioning its integrity and usage. Many creative writers and programmers view ChatGPT's ability to create fictional work and write codes from prompts as a threat to their existence.

Many of these fears are still irrational for now, as ChatGPT and similar AI require human intelligence to oversee and correct inconsistencies and illogical results.

Business applications of ChatGPT

The recent examples of ChatGPT being put to imaginative use should give you an idea of its viability in business. We'll list some business applications of ChatGPT along with its advantages and limitations in its current model.

Research

In 2022, Stanford professors admitted to overhauling their courses in anticipation of students using ChatGPT in assignments and examinations. The survey by The Daily had 17% of respondents admitting to using ChatGPT's assistance in their exams, with a further 5% submitting ChatGPT-generated material without edits. The application of ChatGPT in a recognized educational institution raises the question of its potential in research fields; is it a legitimate option?

Being a neural network trained on a large sample size of human-generated text, ChatGPT can produce very accurate and logical responses. This is further reinforced by its training model known as Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). The method combines the supervision of a human trainer with the AI's learning capabilities to minimize untruthful or potentially harmful results. Thus, you can sometimes end up with a research-paper-worthy response.

It is a great assistant if you want a quick outline for your paper or for non-native speakers who want to brush up on their content. However, ChatGPT still has some limitations in conducting full-on research. It creates responses based on text patterns observed in previous data, increasing the likelihood of the final product plagiarizing from different sources. Also, the AI is not aware of the content. It simply generates the most likely response based on previously observed patterns. Meaning you could end up with a completely nonsensical final response.

If your business does use ChatGPT as a research tool, it is advisable to fact-check constantly.

Social Media Content Ideation and Copywriting

ChatGPT fares better in social media content ideation and copywriting, where fact-based answers are less prominent. It can generate contextual and organic content and enhance written work for structure and readability.

Businesses can feed prompts to ChatGPT and instantly generate content related to the field. It supplements the ideation process by giving teams something to start with. Since ChatGPT trains on datasets of human texts, its responses are usually very readable and may contain bits and pieces of constructive ideas the AI can pull up from its training.

All these traits make ChatGPT an ideal copywriting tool. Creating grammatically sound and readable templates reduces a copywriter's workload. Of course, a human eye is still needed to go through the final draft but all that time saved could give businesses a leg up on the competition.

First-level customer care

A huge part of customer care is interpreting vague questions and customer requests, something ChatGPT may have trouble with in its current model. ChatGPT relies on well-crafted prompts to give appropriate answers and is even known to give inconsistent answers for the same prompt. The AI can also mislead customers with its tendency to provide confident answers regardless of accuracy.

The ideal way to use it would be as first-level customer care. Allowing it to greet, converse, respond and collect customer requests and data in a human-like fashion while leaving detailed technical support to humans.

Advantages of ChatGPT and chatbots to businesses

Availability 24/7

Generally, availability is one of the most significant selling points of current-generation chatbots. While a human employee can only work so much in a week, requires compensation and can be affected by unavoidable life circumstances, an AI like ChatGPT can virtually function 24/7 all year round, barring some error in the service. A single AI can also manage customer interactions that may require multiple employees.

Personalization, remembering names, preferences

Clients can be treated to better personalization with AI- the little things like remembering a name and preferences associated with the client. An AI service also removes the human element and any human errors that come with it.

Cost efficiency

In most cases, having an AI manage your customer interactions can be a more economical choice than maintaining an entire customer support staff. The professional version of ChatGPT for businesses is set to come in at $42 a month.

Future of ChatGPT

ChatGPT is only as good as the datasets it trains on. Its capabilities will only improve with continuous training and iterations. It's also important to note that ChatGPT is, first and foremost, an enhanced chatbot. Although it can generate convincing papers, poems and humour, it should not be mistaken as a replacement for humans or even as an encyclopedia. The text is generated from patterns observed by the AI and is not always logical or factually correct.

However, ChatGPT should not be judged on its limitations alone. There's substance to the hype surrounding it. When was the last time a chatbot could accurately mimic the natural flow of human conversation or replicate computer code based on prompts alone? The trick lies in finding the right balance where it is used to augment human capabilities without being left to its own devices.