Each month, Acceleration Economy Analyst Tony Uphoff joins Cloud Wars Live for a recurring segment. “Uphoff on Industry” explores the innovations, upheavals, and breakthroughs reshaping the world’s biggest markets. In this episode, Tony and Bob discuss the splashy introduction of accessible generative AI, in the form of ChatGPT. Tony provides his POV on what business leaders should be doing (and not doing) to take advantage of this game-changing technology, and shares why he thinks ChatGPT is both over- and underhyped in this moment.
Episode 38 | Generative AI is Overhyped and Underhyped
The Big Themes:
- The automation of knowledge work: This has been happening for a while now—just think of the hours of labor eliminated by search engines—but generative AI takes this automation to a different, higher level.
- ChatGPT is overhyped: The panic over AI tools replacing journalists, teachers, and all human workers is overblown, Tony says. Businesses should be focused on augmenting the work done by people with new technologies.
- ChatGPT is underhyped: “Technological change always precedes cultural change,” Tony says, and there are likely to be massive cultural shifts following widespread access to and use of generative AI tools.
The Big Quote: “Oftentimes, we look at these emerging technologies, and we see dollar signs. We think, Oh, my gosh, we’re gonna automate this over here, which means we don’t have to do that over there… And then we learn over time that these are augmented technologies that are actually accelerating what human beings can do. I would say to senior level executives: train and prepare a workforce to uplevel problem solving and creativity and innovation.”
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