Course Conclusion

Final week of class!  What a journey it has been...  I can honestly say that the hands-on applications that were required for this class were more helpful, to me personally, than the traditional course formats of classes I've had thus far in my MBA program.  I found the readings had real-world applications.  Guerrilla Marketing gave insightful knowledge into marketing and what small budget companies or individuals can do to market/advertise as effectively as a big budget firm.  Strategies were laid out clearly, concisely, and with examples which helped me to understand how the concepts could actually be applied to marketing campaigns.  Surfing the Tsunami was very helpful for understanding possible future states of technology and AI.  It served as an inspiration to become more knowledgeable and involved with AI so that I can be better prepared for the inevitable advancements and abrupt changes coming to the job market.

We were also expected to experiment with some AI applications, first-hand.  I have found ChatGPT to be extremely helpful in both school and work.  I have and will continue to use ChatGPT and it's future versions to find insightful answers, generate messages and ideas, and even help me as I learn about computer coding.  Although ChatGPT has taken the internet by storm recently, I may have never realized it's full potential without having to interface with the program during this class and use it to generate content for me.  I also had fun using DALL-E to create images from simple text.  I found the application to be easy to use and highly creative.  No more wishing I could find a picture or graphic that I'm imaging in my head!  Simply type what you want and in what style, wait a few seconds, and voila!  An AI created image that comes custom to you from your own ideas.  Both programs were created by OpenAI and I'm excited to see who they partner with in the future and what further offerings they come up with.

We were also tasked with creating our own blog, website, and running a real ad-campaign!  Blogger was an intuitive platform that was easy to use and came with many options for the style and background to make my blog unique and professional.  I created a website for a fake company that I made up.  ConsultingRx, a consulting company that offers personalized improvements for healthcare clinics, hospitals, and organizations.  I chose this since I work in healthcare and wanted to create a website that had the realistic appeal of my own start-up company that can offer services to the Chicago-land area.  First, I purchased a real domain on Google Domains so that I had a real site address (SchoellConsulting.com).  I created a my website using Google Sites and used Looka to create my own logo and branding.  The final result was a functioning website with a real domain address and catchy logo which represented what my consulting firm would hypothetically offer.  I was thrilled!  

 

Lastly, I used Google Ads to run a real campaign directed at increasing traffic to my website in hopes of attracting hypothetical clients for my consulting services.  Google Ads was an excellent platform to use and I imagine this specific tool as being the most valuable experience of the entire course.  My campaign was more successful than I anticipated (88 views to my site in 10 days!) and I am already looking for ways that I can use my experience with Google Ads to leverage some potential side hustle income. 

 

All of this was a new experience for me.  I would have never experimented with any of these platforms and now I can say that not only am I familiar with them, but I've actually applied them and created useful content from them!  I will be sharing my progress on LinkedIn to showcase the work that I've done and I have this class to thank for that.  I can see the value of having these skills and hope to become more efficient with each of them and more!

 Until next time,

 

 

 

Top Skills

What are the top skills that employers look for?  This is a very valuable question to answer and can help you to research and possibly obtain new skills to make you a more sought after prospect to a searching employer.  Luckily, LinkedIn provides some information from their site to identify and compile a list of top skills and top hard skills that employers value. 

 

 

LinkedIn analyzed data from employers, recruiters, and job postings from April 2022 - October 2022.  Comparing the demand of skills from employers with the skills that were possessed by LinkedIn members who were hired, produced LinkedIn's most in-demand skills overall and the most in-demand hard skills. 

 

         (Southern, 2023)

Having management skills and demonstrating the ability to successfully oversee diverse teams, projects, and operations is becoming increasingly important to employers.  Likewise, communication is key to promoting teamwork and collaboration across diverse teams that are communicating and interacting remotely at an increasing rate.  Customer service rounds off the top three skills, which demonstrates the value companies place on the ability to increase and promote brand loyalty and long-term growth (Southern, 2023). 

 

(Southern, 2023)

Hard skills refer to a worker's expertise in carrying out job-specific tasks.  Typically, these are comprised of technical skills or specialized capabilities required to complete specific work or tasks.  As you can see from the list, computer skills are at the forefront of today's hard skills.  Software development, cloud computing, data analysis, and several coding programs nearly comprise the entire list (Southern, 2023).

The data provided by LinkedIn's analysis suggests that the current job market places high value and emphasis on soft skills (management, communication, customer service, leadership, etc.) and technical skills (data analysis, software development, cloud computing, programming/coding, etc.)(Southern, 2023).

 I fully expect that we will see this type of blended value of hard and soft skills required or preferred for high-level jobs in the short-term.  Long-term, I imagine the proverbial pendulum will increasingly swing towards hard (technical) skills being of higher value.  While the soft skills will still be of some value, employers will likely be implementing more automation, AI, and machine learning models for forecasting from big data, identifying trends and projections, increasing efficiency, etc.  Having the familiarity, experience, and technical skills required to implement, interface, service, and manage these systems will only increase your value as a prospective employee.  Hopefully this list was as helpful for you as it was for me!  This analysis from LinkedIn was informative and motivational for me personally to explore classes and tutorials to help me acquire more of the top skills that employers are looking for.

Until next time, 

Cited Sources: 

1.    Southern, M. G. (2023, February 16). LinkedIn: Top 10 In-Demand Skills In 2023. Search Engine Journal. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/linkedin-top-10-in-demand-skills-in-2023/479879/#close

Is AI Taking My Job?!

As AI continues to advance, become more prevalent in our daily lives, and integrate into business operations, it seems the question on everyone's mind is, Will my job be replaced by AI?  As I've ventured into learning about AI and interfacing with some of the popular applications, I've begun to wonder the same thing.  So I decided to take to the internet to do some investigating and find out what jobs are high-risk and low-risk of being replaced by AI.

A team at Princeton University compared the capabilities of AI powered applications to 52 different human abilities in different job functions to see which jobs might be at the highest risk of replacement by AI or machine learning in the near future.  Here's the top 20 list of high-risk automation according to this study:

(Liberatore, 2023) 

Bad news for telemarketers and teachers, right?  Maybe.  But I think that this is truly only scratching the surface of what jobs are at risk and I imagine that this list will shift dramatically with further advancements in AI/Machine Learning models. Before we dive into that further, let's take a look at the lowest risk jobs of replacement from AI:

(The 65 Jobs With the Lowest Risk of Automation by Artificial Intelligence and Robots  | U.S. Career Institute - USCI, n.d.)

According to this study, all of these jobs have relatively a 0% chance of being replaced by AI or automation in the near future...  0% chance of pretty much anything seems like a foolish assumption to me, especially when it comes to rapidly developing, complex automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.  As you can see, this list is comprised of healthcare, arts, engineering, and other jobs that have high degrees of variability, hands on work, and knowledge in the field.  It makes sense that these types of jobs would be less susceptible to initial advancements in AI but I still feel that any/all jobs could be impacted by AI eventually.

ChatGPT has made the biggest leap as of late and because of that, we now see the power of advanced language models that can be taught and refined through Reinforced Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF).  The program has had huge success and can provide advanced language in the form of a conversation.  Since there's been a breakthrough in language modeling, it makes sense that the current high-risk list is comprised of careers that are heavily reliant on language.  But there are other AI technologies all around us that don't involve language.  I'm betting you've heard of and used most of the following:

SIRI - Apple's personal assistant.  Voice activated helper of everything from finding information, providing directions, adding events/reminders to personal calendars, sending messages, placing calls, etc.  Siri uses machine learning to get smarter and better predict and understand our requests.

ALEXA - Similar to Siri, Alexa is Amazon's personal assistant.  Armed with similar functionality to Siri, Alexa is a voice activated personal assistant with the added ability to control some smart-home features (more on this later).

TESLA - Tesla itself is not necessarily an AI technology on it's own, but it certainly incorporates them into it's functionality and driving experience.  Machine learning allows features such as self-driving and predictive response to make traveling safer, smarter, and more comfortable.

COGITO - Fusion of machine learning and behavioral science aimed at improving interaction with customer service representatives over the phone.  A powerful example of behavioral adaptation to improve representatives' emotional intelligence and improve the customer experience.

BOXEVER - Machine learning intended to improve customer experiences in the travel industry.  Delivers 'micro-moments' or experiences that delight customers and enhance their travel experiences and help representatives better guide their clients on their travel experience.

AMAZON - Transactional AI that refines predictive advertisement of goods online.  Amazon has become so good, they often know what you want before you do! In fact, they intend to begin the shipping process before purchases are even made! 

(Adams, 2017)

The list goes on...  So although language models have made the biggest leap recently, what will be next?  The possibilities are endless but one thing is for sure, supercomputers, processers, machine learning, and AI will continue to advance in speed, capabilities, and complexity.  All the more reason to become more familiar with AI and consider picking up some knowledge in how it works along the way!

Until next time,

Cited Sources: 

1.    Adams, R. (2017, January 10). 10 Powerful Examples Of Artificial Intelligence In Use Today. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertadams/2017/01/10/10-powerful-examples-of-artificial-intelligence-in-use-today/?sh=4e28dc9f420d

2.     Liberatore, S. (2023, March 7). The 20 jobs most at risk as the AI boom continues: Is YOUR occupation on the list? Mail Online. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11828001/The-20-jobs-risk-AI-boom-continues-occupation-list.html

3.     The 65 Jobs With the Lowest Risk of Automation by Artificial Intelligence and Robots  | U.S. Career Institute - USCI. (n.d.). U.S. Career Institute. https://www.uscareerinstitute.edu/blog/65-jobs-with-the-lowest-risk-of-automation-by-ai-and-robots

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Ad

Let's talk about how to ad!  No, I'm not talking about 'adding' as in mathematics, I'm talking about how to advertise!  This class enabled me to gain real-life experience running a legitimate ad campaign with the help of Google Ads.  As you may have seen in my previous posts, Google Ads comes equipped with a user-friendly platform, packed full of helpful suggestions and analytics to help you run a successful campaign.  So I wondered, what else is out there and how can I get some familiarity with other practical platforms for running and managing ad campaigns?

The answer is all around us!  I didn't really consider how available ad campaigns can be but if you think about it, it really does make sense.  Where do you see ads in your day to day interactions?  The answer is, Social Media!  Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter...  all generate massive amounts of revenue from advertisements.  Further yet, the picture/video platforms offer marketing and advertising opportunity as well.  Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram...  the full arsenal of social media platforms that can help you advertise better than ever before.

 So I wondered, Which platform is the best? and How does one determine which platforms to utilize?  Here's what I found:

One study, comprised of surveys from nearly 1,500 marketers gave some strong insight into which platforms are considered the best.  The below graphic is a two-fold depiction.  The dark blue bar represents the percentage of surveyed marketers that use each platform for marketing/advertisement.  The light blue bar represents Return-On-Ad-Spend (ROAS). 

 

(Muhammad, 2022)

More than half of those surveyed use LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Google, and Facebook.  More importantly, Facebook and Google were the juggernauts of ROAS, providing 25% and 44% ROAS, respectively.  This indicates that these two platforms are where your best performance outcomes are and Google is far and above everyone, even the second place Facebook.  So there you have it, all you need to do is run your ad campaign on Google, right?  Well, we've learned from this class that this would not be the most successful strategy.  It's valuable to understand your target audience, your reach, and where you can have the most success using multiple modes of marketing and advertising platforms together.  

I found a blog post with a descriptive and helpful explanation of what to consider when advertising on these platforms.  Overall, it gave me a much better understanding of what types of platforms to consider for ads and why.  Here's a high-level summary of the benefits for running ads on social media sites vs Google Ads:

Key Advantages to Running Social Media Ads:

1.    Improving your brand recognition and building awareness  

- Even though users are not ready or interested in buying your product, you allow them to become familiar with your brand and can showcase your company/product.

2.     Getting insights about your target audience

- Learn more about your intended audience.  Use the data/analytics to optimize your campaign's performance. 

3.     Growing engagement rate

- Increases your reach and audience engagement.  Relevant and interesting content can funnel potential customers to your brand.

4.    Increasing inbound traffic

- Social media can increase traffic to your site or brand.  Clicking on your ads can help customers find out more about your company, products, services, etc and allows the opportunity for them to volunteer contact info or subscribe to alerts or newsletters.

5.    Generating and improving brand loyalty

 - Grow awareness and develop nurturing relationships with potential and existing customers/viewers.

6.     Building a brand community

- Create a community around your brand to increase word-of-mouth referrals and promote company growth. 

Key Advantages to Running Google Ads: 

1.    Google Ads are a fast way to gain leads

- Reduce the time to build up your SEO and allow Google to target warm leads and funnel traffic to your site/brand.

2.    Transparency and competition

- Google displays what competitors in your industry are paying and bidding for similar ads.  Use that data to gain a competitive advantage on the optimization of your ads.

3.    Reach more potential customers

- Google is the world's largest search engine.  Google Ads can vastly improve your immediate reach by channeling your ads through YouTube, Gmail, and Display Networks.

4.    Understand your target audience better

 - Review helpful data points such as most-used keywords, demographics, locations, and age of users who viewed your ad or clicked your ad to narrow the focus of your ad or adjust the content to hone in on your target audience.

 (Nexoya, 2022)

Hoping you find this as helpful as I did.  I know I will be using this knowledge to try to leverage my digital marketing/ad skills to even more successful campaigns in the future and I hope you do too!

Until next time,

Source Citation: 

1.    Muhammad, F. (2022, November 3). The Best Digital Advertising Platforms. Instapage. https://instapage.com/blog/best-advertising-platforms

2.    Nexoya. (2022, April 11). Social media vs Google Ads: Which is better for your strategy? Nexoya. https://www.nexoya.com/blog/social-media-google-ads-which-is-better-for-your-strategy/ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looka This!

This week I experimented with the savvy, AI powered branding tool; Looka.  I found this software to be incredibly easy to use, very customizable, and satisfyingly creative.  With just a few simple prompts, selections, and choices, you can use this tool as a way to establish a powerful brand image and logo.  Looka quickly created brand imaging that was superior to anything I could've created on my own, and it was done instantly!  A full compliment of adjustments, customizations and variations of templates, colors, slogans, and graphics were all at my fingertips.  I was so impressed, I felt compelled to use the branding to completely remake my website to give it a more professional appearance with branding that I am now proud to promote!

Looka's Interface and Customizations:

Given my expertise and work experience in healthcare, I chose to create a healthcare consulting company and built my website with images from the internet.  After using Looka, I was able to create a legitimate logo that gives a professional appearance.  Since my company is offering healthcare consulting, I wanted to have a name that was representational of the healthcare field.  Hence, ConsultingRx.  For those who aren't familiar, Rx is the commonly used abbreviation to represent prescription in the medical field.  Next, I needed a catchy slogan to tie in the name, image, and services that my company has to offer.  After a few moments of 'drawing a blank', I called upon my newly found friend, ChatGPT to help me create a slogan.  The result, was a perfect compliment to my company name; Prescribed Solutions.  Short, simple, representative of the logo/brand, and indicating that my company offers customized business solutions for healthcare facilities; their very own prescription.  Lastly, customizing the colors to represent what a stereotypical prescription pill bottle looks like, orange and white.  The final product, shown below, felt complete and all encompassing of what I was trying to achieve.   

New Logo and Slogan:

Initially, I was just 'playing around' with Looka to see what it had to offer.  I quickly realized the potential and completely rebranded my 'company's' name, logo, and slogan; all because of the impressive results from this software!  My website evolved from a simple title and company name (Schoell Consulting), to a more appealing and attractive name and image that speaks to my target audience and indicates what my company does.  Not only can Looka create an attractive image and logo, it also offers a preview of the full compliment of brand marketing and products that it has to offer.  Users can simply choose from a selection of packages and receive a variety of products that proudly promote your new design.  Business cards, letterheads, t-shirts, and more!

Business Related Items:

My website was overhauled with images and branding that was provided by Looka and it is much better because of it.  I now have a professional image, logo, and slogan that promote my company/product and I have Looka to thank for that.  If you have interest in sprucing up your site or your company's image, I would strongly recommend giving Looka a try and see what it has to offer.  I was pleasantly surprised and I think you will be too!  Check out this quick tutorial on how to use it if you want but the ease of use makes it possible to simply jump in and start rebranding your company with new-age brand marketing.

Looka Tutorial:

I hope that Looka is as helpful to you as it was for me.  If you happened to visit my website from my previous post, take a look at the difference now! 

SchoellConsulting.com

My only regret was not discovering Looka sooner.  I would've chosen a domain that was directed to ConsultingRx instead of SchoellConsulting.  I would highly recommend engaging Looka to help with your branding needs and consider using ChatGPT to help you with some creative solutions as well.  Overall, I can confidently say that you can brand better with Looka!

Until next time,

ChatGPT Winning the AI Wars

AI in all its glory, has created some issues as it has progressed and gained massive popularity.  ChatGPT in particular has caused disruption to the Education System.  The power of a linguistic/dialogue chat bot to process and provide complex, detailed, and accurate answers and content has quickly stressed teachers and professors, testing their ability to know what is 'real', as in, created by the student, and what was generated from AI.  

ChatGPT has the capability to write you a paper, an essay, and even take an exam for you with shockingly literate and instantaneous results.  ChatGPT recently received a grade of 'B' on an Operations Management final exam from the MBA program at the prestigious University of Pennsylvannia's Wharton School of Business.  With incredible capabilities such as this, it seems reasonable to ask, What's next for education?  Do we go back to pen and paper exams?  Initially, this was the strategy taken by educators to quickly combat the ability for students to have their work generated by ChatGPT or related AI programs.  Enter GPTZero, a software created specifically for educators, intended to combat this issue.  GPTZero is designed to identify content that was most likely created by AI to help educators identify this newly founded version of 'plagiarism'.

So, the battle begins.  Likely, we are going to see a back and forth, cat and mouse type game play out between the creator and the content police.  I don't know where this will end up exactly but it sure feels like a variation of cyber security vs hackers.  Generally, the hackers are always ahead and in this case, I think AI from the perspective of creating content will stay ahead as well.  Blocking and identification software will work, but not for long.  I fully expect to see a reactionary back and forth for quite some time but the real question is, At what point is it unavoidable or becomes irrelevant?  At some point, this will be integral in what we do and how we do it.  I believe education will need to embrace this and find ways to operate with the technology and not against it.  Time will tell.  

As a fun exercise and a demonstration of what ChatGPT can do (on a very basic level).  I asked it to write my blog post for me this week.  Take a look and see what you think!  As a fun bonus, the pictures in this blog were generated by DALL-E, a different AI that generates pictures and images in various forms from a user's request.

Content below was completely generated by ChatGPT from a basic prompt that I gave it.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has come a long way in recent years, making remarkable progress in fields such as computer vision, natural language processing, and robotics. With the increasing sophistication of AI technology, many industries are adopting AI solutions to improve their operations and reduce costs. This has led to a rise in productivity, efficiency, and innovation across various sectors.

However, this progress has also raised concerns about the potential loss of jobs due to automation. According to a report by the World Economic Forum, around 75 million jobs may be displaced by AI and other technological advancements by 2022. The report also suggests that while new jobs will be created, there will be a significant skills gap, requiring workers to upskill or reskill to remain employable.

It is important to note that AI has the potential to augment human capabilities rather than replace them. In some cases, AI can free up workers from repetitive or dangerous tasks, allowing them to focus on higher value work. By embracing AI and upskilling, workers can stay ahead of the curve and secure their future in the rapidly evolving job market. To ensure a smooth transition, organizations and governments must work together to invest in education and training programs to prepare the workforce for the future of work.

Pretty impressive, right?  Give it a try yourself!  I've already used this a few times at work and I imagine that anyone who isn't familiar with this program within the next 6 months, will be behind the proverbial 8-ball.

Until next time,

AI in Healthcare

As a current member of the heathcare workforce, there was one subject discussed in Chapter 2 of Dr Todd Kelsey's book Surfing the Tsunami that struck a particular chord with me.  In the subsection Health and Diagnosis, Dr Kelsey introduces and discusses AI in healthcare and particularly the progression of machine learning and AI in performing complex decisions or diagnosis that currently we have to rely on a physician's expertise to determine.  Dr Kelsey mentions that "...there have already been instances of algorithms that have been proven to be more accurate than doctors with diagnosis" (Kelsey 2018). I wondered to myself, "How far has this already progressed?" and "Could AI/ML/computers really be the next generation of medical doctors?"

As advanced as healthcare is these days, in many other ways, it would be considered to be relatively archaic compared to the technology and advancements that other industries have leveraged.  Medical records were primarily recorded and kept with pen and paper only a few years ago!  So while AI and technology advancements continue to astonish in many industries, healthcare felt to me like a slow adopter and relatively safe field to be in.  Not only does it seem to be a late adopting industry, medicine and the application of therapeutic intervention is an art form based in scientific knowledge.  The difficulty with medicine is people.  And by people, I really mean variance.  Everyone is different, has different genetics, responds differently, etc.  It's almost impossible to know the right answer when there is so much variance from person to person and how one person reacts to a therapy, medication, or treatment, is completely different than the next.  So, it seems to me that the skills and knowledge of physicians, cultivated by years of education and practice couldn't possibly be replaced by computers, right?  Well, to be honest, I'm not so sure anymore.

Google has multiple AI models that are being implemented in medicine.  In fact, my own organization, Northwestern Medicine, partnered with Google to develop a model designed to identify lung cancer from screening tests.  A skeptic may wonder, as I did, Ok, fine. But how well did it perform and is it really that accurate to be relied upon for such a serious concern? This model can identify cancer better than a radiologist with 8 years of experience and achieved expert-level accuracy (Wiggers 2019).  See that picture above?  This is a chest x-ray of pneumothorax, commonly explained as a collapsed lung.  The highlighted area within the image on the right was generated by another one of Google's AI models.  This was missed by multiple radiologists but accurately identified by the AI model (Wiggers 2019).  Google has also developed DeepMind which is an AI model that can recommend the proper line of treatment for 50 eye diseases with 94% accuracy, thanks to advances in processing visual information through eye scans (Wiggers 2019).

Although incredible feats of advanced AI exist in medicine today and will certainly develop and progress further, I'm not convinced that we will see AI replace physicians.  At least, not yet.  While the data above certainly serves as strong and convincing evidence for the progression of AI and machine learning within healthcare, the gap is too large to close rapidly.  I expect to see more and more integration of AI in medicine and a vast improvement in accuracy and quality of care.  But I also expect physicians and clinical professionals to use these models available as tools in assisting them to provide high-quality healthcare, not replace them altogether. 

 

Dr Kelsey points out that machine learning involves the performance of complex algorithms, supplied by an incredible amount of data and analysis (Kelsey 2018). Dr Kelsey compares this learning technique to the way the human brain creates neurons, developing a network of decision pathways and optimal answers through the development of a new generation of computer chips called neuromorphic chips (Kelsey 2018).  Could a development like this shorten the timeline or close the gap? Yes, of course.  I fully expect to see changes to both hardware and software that we currently use and from that, we most certainly could progress to the point where machines can not only perform all functions and decisions of a physician, but do them better. The parabolic advancements in technology, AI, and machine learning is just getting going and certainly warrants the attention of leaders in healthcare.  Computers don't get tired, they don't have 'a bad day', they don't act on emotions, and for many other reasons, can be much more dependable than humans.  I foresee a heavy AI integration over the next decade and fully expect to see physicians utilizing AI to assist them in not only performing surgeries or procedures, but making in-depth, detailed, and accurate clinical diagnosis and treatment plans.  Will they get to the point where we no longer need humans in medicine? We shall see.

Until next time,

References:

1.  Kelsey, T. (2018). Surfing the Tsunami; An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and                                    Options for Responding.

2.  Wiggers, K. (2019, December 3). Google details AI that classifies chest X-rays with human-level               accuracy. VentureBeat. https://venturebeat.com/ai/google-details-ai-that-classifies-chest-x-rays-             with-human-level-accuracy/

Is AI Taking Over?!

Before AI was even being implemented and used in a practical sense, people have been concerned with the idea that a machine or program would be capable of operating based on 'thought'.  Perhaps the most iconic depiction of the fear from AI was James Cameron's film franchise The Terminator.  AI and Machine Learning programs are starting to gain major traction in development and attention which begs the question, Is AI taking over?!  

 

 

The internet boom was the most recent radical shift in technology that drastically changed the job market, marketing, sales, and pretty much every single aspect of how businesses operate and how consumers purchase goods/services.  Not to mention, nearly all aspects of our personal lives and how we socialize as well!  Anywhere you go, people are constantly connected to the internet.  Searching for questions/answers, checking their social media accounts, or taking part in the addiction of doom scrolling.  The fast and radical shift that resulted from the internet boom is how I view the progress of AI and Machine Learning programs.  While our current forms of AI tools don't possess any characteristics to prompt the fear of the inevitable rise of Skynet, this technology is rapidly advancing and will undoubtedly change the job market, for better or for worse.  

One program that has garnered much attention lately is a language/dialect AI program called ChatGPT.  ChatGPT is a resource that uses AI and natural language processing (NLP) to produce content and answers to prompts submitted by the user, formatted in an engaging, conversation-style text.  Some are using ChatGPT as a search engine tool to answer their questions.  The results are an impressive output that appears instantly and feels like a supercharged Google.  A text is composed by the AI to answer your question using its vast connections to internet sources and content, while checking its own work in an attempt to provide only accurate information to the user.  Is that so scary, after all? No, certainly not.  At least, not in that context and in that use.

This program is essentially brand new.  It was launched on November 30, 2022 so it has only existed for a couple of months.  By December 15th, Open AI (ChatGPT's creator) claimed that it had already exceeded one million users!  It stands to reason that this number has grown dramatically since then and the users are becoming more advanced in how to use ChatGPT for much more than a supercharged search engine.  In my brief experience with ChatGPT I've been able to harness not only search results but entire writing works that are grammatically correct.  How does something like this impact the education system?  This software is capable of producing accurate works within seconds!  For example, you can ask ChatGPT to write a two page college paper on economic policy (screenshot of real results below).  You can see that instantly, the script is generated from the software.  Could this be used by students to complete their papers/assignments? I believe the answer is, absolutely and instantly.  

And what about creating content?  The search results can be continually optimized to make things clearer and more presentable.  Below, I asked ChatGPT to help me create an ad campaign for selling makeup.  Then asked it to put the info into a table for easier viewing.  Will this technology be utilized by content creators? Again, the answer is absolutely.  

I believe we will soon see content creators using ChatGPT to create content for them. Simpler, faster, more accurate, and all done via AI language/dialect development such as ChatGPT.  It is entirely possible that AI such as this will be the new creators of much of the content consumed by our society.  Just from this simple exercise, we've actually learned a lot from ChatGPT's responses!  It can create processes (when given detailed and directed search content), create content, write papers, and save countless hours of traditional web page browsing and researching.

While ChatGPT isn't the feared conqueror known as Skynet, it certainly is part of what will be a radical shift in how we do business and communicate with the world. I for one, am not a believer that we are nearing a sentient program that will be devoted to enslaving the population but I do think we are at the edge of a tremendous technological evolution that will rapidly and drastically change the way we do everything.

Until next time,