Companies must take proactive approach in using generative AI

ORGANIZATIONS must be proactive about the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) to help manage its accompanying risks, analysts said.

“For organizations or individuals who have access to the new capabilities, it simply opens up new ways for them to prompt responses and interact with the chatbot,” Ralph Vincent J. Regalado, chief executive officer and founder of Senti AI, a local AI solutions and services company, said in an interview.

“Perhaps ChatGPT’s new updates will allow more Filipinos to become well-versed in using AI-powered tools. But of course, some discretion is still needed to avoid misuse and abuse of these technologies,” he added.

This comes after ChatGPT on Monday announced that it will soon have voice and image capabilities for a more intuitive user experience.

ChatGPT creator OpenAI will roll out the multimedia features of its chatbot to its premium users over the next two weeks, it said in a Sept. 25 post.

Voice will be available on smartphones and images will be available on all ChatGPT platforms soon after, it added.

“The most exciting thought for me would be brainstorming with ChatGPT in the room,” Ria Ysabelle Flora, a power solutions lead of a data science startup, said on the new voice and image features of the platform.

“You now gain another team member to throw ideas via text, voice, or image, and engage in ideation and collaborative work. However, the caveat here is that you and your human team members should be knowledgeable enough to scope out its hallucinations and its substantial output,” she added.

She emphasized the importance of prompt engineering in response to reliability issues to “provide enough information that it may operate and provide the closest and most substantial output for you.”

While generative AI can help simplify administrative tasks, it could have adverse effects on important sectors like education, Ms. Flora said.

“I am generally optimistic about it, but it would be a matter of making sure that we have sufficient policies and regulations to mitigate its effects to our systems,” she said.

“We should likewise caveat that too much regulation may lead to curtailing the growth and speed of its development. I think finding the sweet spot in between would be the biggest challenge for policy makers, as nations around the world are now challenged to take a pivot and be more proactive and innovative,” Ms. Flora added.

GENERATIVE AI FOR BUSINESSES
Mr. Regalado said there could be several uses for generative AI in companies, such as “speeding up the creation of marketing copies and publishing materials, crunching data at breakneck speed to extract more insights at less time and effort, and providing improved, more conversational customer service.”

“Decision makers have to identify the best use case that applies to them. Identify the pain points or bottlenecks in their operations and consider if it’s worth being remedied by AI,” he said.

“Since the technology is new, companies can engage in building pilot projects first so they can measure value and impact on their organizations. Getting ahead is proven to help increase business differentiation making businesses be ahead of their competitors,” Mr. Regalado added. — M.H.L. Antivola