Nash Squared Chief People Officer, Andrew Neal, looks at where we are with our understanding of GenAI and why we should be cautious.This article first appeared on ComputerWeekly.com.
First, an admission. I am not a GenAI expert. Then again, who is? Even the computer scientists, coders and product developers behind Copilot, ChatGPT and Bard have only essentially made the tools available – even they can’t be totally sure of what the future ahead of us looks like as the machine intelligence learns and expands.
It’s inevitable, in fact, that with a technology so new and that’s developing so fast, there are a whole clutch of unknowns alongside the things we can be sure of.
What we do know is that GenAI has incredible potential. It could revolutionise the ways in which we all work and add huge value to what we do. Simply as a support tool to enable us to get things done more quickly, the power of GenAI is already clear. It’s akin to a ‘virtual assistant’ or, in human terms, a really smart intern who can find, extract and present whatever you’re looking for to you.
Whether it’s instantly finding and formatting specific technical information that you need, writing first drafts of documents or presentations, creating templates for policies, contracts or other assets, summarising and comparing source materials, or automating the compilation of meeting notes and actions – GenAI can be a powerful aid to us all.
In most of these cases, it will take you 60-70% of the way. The human needs to tidy it up, smooth out the rough edges and likely add some context to it to get it over the line. This does mean that people need to hone new skills to work effectively with GenAI – casting a sharp editorial eye over content, having the ability to critically review and assess. It also means that we need to guard against a ‘deskilling’ risk – where people become over-reliant on technology to do things for them and lose their own professional and curious edge.
Another thing that’s clear is that GenAI really isn’t so good (at least at the moment) for creative, imaginative, innovative content – that remains the preserve of human beings and on present evidence looks set to stay that way!
Read the full blog here