ChatGPT has caused a lot of ink to flow over the past few weeks. It is now important to take a step back to analyze the real impact of this content-generating technology.
Many actors have been working on it for a long time and are much more advanced than what we are witnessing now. Other disruptive technologies that are less known to date are fast approaching and concern images, videos, sounds, satellites, among others.
A new sequence in the short history of artificial intelligence opens, marked by performance gains for organizations that deign to dive.
The field of intellectual creativity is thus entering a major transformation propelled above all by the potential of human innovation. Like the calculator in mathematics, generative artificial intelligence can replace humans for certain tasks such as reading, writing or simply having a conversation.
It will never completely replace human intelligence. Above all, it will increase its capacities thanks to the ingestion and crossing of gigantic volumes of information and its synthesis capacities.
Despite everything, we are collectively experiencing a real knowledge and knowledge revolution, justified by the number of areas affected and the intensity of the disruption of supply and demand: education and lifelong learning, public policies and even geopolitical relations.
The cost of these technologies is already not a barrier to entry, and this cost will decrease over time. There will be no monopoly. Investments will flow: to use the calculator example, what government or company could do without artificial intelligence?
At the same time, we would not accept that the calculator gives an erroneous result half the time. And this is where some companies and organizations might be hesitant to get in on the action. The crucial issue of precision requires regulation and an AI code of ethics, which will prove complex in a global context.
Deployments at scale will require a lot of funding from the tech industry to achieve the highest standards of precision and accuracy. Tens of billions will be invested in this way. The head-to-head battle between all the major technology players already established has only just begun and regulators will not be able to block acquisitions or alliances.
The pace and manner in which this technology will be adopted will have to be monitored. Over the next few months, we will see concretely how it fits into our daily lives.
The second transformation is that of the work revolution by adding a series of new functionalities in office automation and teleworking. Consider, for example, the functions of summary, automatic generation of table of contents or editorial autocompletion. The productivity gains are therefore enormous.
Each company will launch its Small Data strategies in the face of Big Data. Indeed, without enough internal data, it is impossible to use the power of ChatGPT-type models by influencing them enough to adjust them with the necessary level of expertise and context, in fields as diverse as products, l customer experience, logistics, human resources or even legal matters. Data lakes will finally find breakthrough new outlets, leaving companies that don’t have them far behind.
For companies, and eventually everyone, to really take full advantage of this technological revolution, the mobilization of society as a whole will be necessary. In particular, governments will have to drastically accelerate technological and economic accessibility to internet and cellular services.
For a country like Canada, it is no longer a question of having access to high speed, it is time to break down the barriers that hinder many communities in accessing the latest technologies.
This revolution is also that of the next generations. Our young people will have to be introduced to the phenomenal power of artificial intelligence and made aware of its darker sides as soon as they arrive at school. These upheavals will affect us all to a greater or lesser extent, but will certainly require increased vigilance and adaptive legislation to limit abuses while propelling the universe of possibilities.
