ChatGPT: Should we be afraid or take advantage of it?

While you read this article, millions worldwide are interacting with and, probably, feeling astonished by ChatGPT, a prodigious technology based on artificial intelligence techniques launched to the market in November 2022, revolutionizing how we live.

Created by the American company OpenAI, ChatGPT is designed to help you with almost anything.

It can translate a text into any language you want; it can write code in any computer language for any function you wish to; it can compose a song about the topic you choose, write a literary work, a script, a poem, or an article according to the parameters and length suggested; it can solve a complex maths problem, or even make recommendations on healthcare, trips, and films. Most surprisingly, ChatGPT chats with its users pretending to be real people. Besides giving all kinds of information, it responds to reactions, makes questions, asks further, suggests comments, and even provides advice.

It seems like science fiction, but it is not.

The future is today

ChatGPT's launch vastly exceeded all business expectations: in its short life to date, it's already got more than 100 million users, which, according to all forecasts, will keep skyrocketing in the next few months.

The United States has the highest percentage of regular ChatGPT users, more than 10% of all world users, according to a survey carried out by SimilarWeb. It is also all the rage in Latin America. According to said study, 10% of the users are in Latin America. This tool is widely used in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, and Peru.

Its creator and OpenAI president, Sam Altman, who used to have a relatively low profile, shying away from the media until less than a year ago, has become a business guru. His presence is required worldwide by prominent multinational leaders, the leading media conglomerates, and even by the presidents of the most powerful countries.

But how does this new tool threatening to put the world upside down work? ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence platform that works with an algorithm including at least 175 billion parameters to come up with answers for specific questions and to generate text in a natural language.

Unlike chatbots known so far, ChatGPT does not give out preset answers. Still, it is trained (based on an ongoing learning process) to understand, contextualize, and give coherent answers depending on the variety of requests sent by the users.

ChatGPT is supported by GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) technology, a pre-trained language model, also created by OpenAI, which in its recently announced latest release, GPT-4, will offer higher accuracy in its answers and interactions, aiming to perform more and more like human beings.

More value and better results

A new technology bursting into the market causes concern; for example, the system will take on tasks currently carried out by many people, thus causing unemployment. There are also detractors, such as those warning about the damage artificial intelligence might cause in the hands of evil or unscrupulous people or those forecasting AI will dominate humanity.

At the other end of the rope, ChatGPT's arrival promises uncountable benefits that will improve businesses and people's lives worldwide.

It has had good results in healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and the metallurgical sectors.

Its versatility and capacity for generating intelligent content also greatly help marketing and advertising agencies, the media, and education and research institutions.

Specialists say implementing artificial intelligence in companies will not eliminate jobs; instead, it will transform them with added value to help employees perform better.

Being able to analyze vast amounts of data, ChatGPT can help companies of all sizes and industries make decisions based on data improve both their operating efficiency and customer experience, empower e-commerce, and increase productivity.

Suitable allies

Big technology companies like SAP have worked with artificial intelligence in some solutions. This is the case for SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Build Process Automation, SAP Sales Cloud, and SAP Integrated Business Planning, among others, offering automated, customized applications suitable for their customers' needs.

Christian Klein, SAP CEO, recently said they had developed an offering of more than 50 use cases for artificial intelligence and are already working with ChatGPT jointly with Microsoft.

Along the same line, within this ecosystem of state-of-the-art technology companies, SEIDOR, one of SAP's leading business partners and a member of United VARs, has also incorporated artificial intelligence into several of its products to help automate tasks and optimize its customer's demand forecasts.

SEIDOR works with SAP and Microsoft solutions; one of its main products is Sevas, a virtual assistant that can resolve user doubts, carry out actions, send notifications, enable automatic processes, and integrate with operating systems. At the same time, it offers its clients a great variety of chatbot solutions that can be combined with an AI service or system.

Technological milestone

"What I've been finding in AI in the last 12 months is astonishing, and it can be as important as the PC, the PC with a graphical user interface, or the Internet. This is one of the four major milestones in digital technology. AI will change how people work, learn, travel, get health care, and communicate with each other," predicted Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, a company that has invested several million dollars in the ChatGPT project.

The change is here, now, and among us. There is a before, and after the times we are living. We are experiencing a paradigm change that is transforming how people engage with technology and allowing businesses to optimize their productivity and profitability.

A real knowledge revolution with such immense potential that nobody can yet foresee how far it can go.