Specialist in technology, innovation and marketing, Helbert Costa, presents his most recent work, “ChatGPT Explained”, published by Citadel Grupo Editorial. In the book, written in just 10 days using the answer software itself, Helbert dives into the debate about artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on the job market, communication and content production. Rather than fearing replacement by AI, the author argues that it is time to prepare to work together with these technologies.
As a partner at Monte Bravo Investimentos and advisor at Play9, Helbert emphasizes that process automation is already a reality in competitive companies and warns that the extinction of job vacancies is an inevitable issue. However, he also underscores the importance of not becoming overly dependent on AI, highlighting the need to maintain the ability to reason critically and to preserve empathy and interpersonal understanding.
In the book, the author explores how ChatGPT and other AI tools work, addressing the benefits and challenges in the work environment, ethical issues, handling information and how to identify potential problems. In addition, it offers practical tips to start using the tool, insights for content production and programming language. With an integrated response bot, the “HelBot”, the book seeks to keep its contents up to date and become an indispensable guide for those who wish to explore the possibilities of artificial intelligence.
What was the motivation behind writing the book “ChatGPT Explained” and what message do you hope to convey to readers?
I want to help people and companies prepare for the world we are living in. I see that many people have selective blindness and try not to see what is happening in today’s world, and the reality is only one: mastering artificial intelligence or not will determine whether the person will belong to the highly productive group or the easily replaceable group . Millions of jobs are disappearing as first people are becoming extraordinarily more productive, eliminating the need for entire teams to perform routine tasks. Today I know people who, after 3 months of using AI, are already producing for an entire team, just as I know people who lost their jobs or saw their companies reduced to dust because they did not prepare for the AI Era. I want to show people that you can have the best professional time of your life or the worst. It is exclusively the choice of each person.
How do you see the relationship between artificial intelligence and the job market? What are the benefits and challenges of this interaction?
Clearly artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the job market. As AI becomes easier to use, it is being used by workers across industries to automate tasks that were previously performed exclusively by humans. This is leading to job losses in some industries such as manufacturing and services. However, AI is also creating jobs in other industries such as technology and healthcare.
Over time, more technological countries are likely to have a competitive advantage over less technological countries. The most technological countries will have more access to AI and will be able to empower people to use AI to create products and services. This will lead to an increase in productivity and the creation of new jobs. The same will happen in companies and with people within the same market. People who are able to learn and adapt to new technologies will be more successful. People who don’t are likely to lose their jobs. But notice that they won’t lose their jobs to AI. They will lose to people who use AI better than them. Understanding this difference is crucial for people’s development.
At this point, it is worth quoting the World Economic Forum’s October 2020 report, which predicts that AI is expected to eliminate approximately 85 million jobs worldwide by 2025. However, it is also expected to generate 97 million new jobs in various fields. , including big data, machine learning, information security and digital marketing. The problem in countries like Brazil is that this career transition is not so easy, as we will see changes such as: a vacancy for a cleaner is closed, a vacancy for an engineer with knowledge in computer vision and mechanical engineering to build cleaning and maintenance robots opens. A vacancy for a truck driver or delivery person closes, a vacancy for a specialist in navigation systems and autonomous fleet control opens. In these two examples it is clear that this adaptation will not be easy.
These same changes will also happen in offices. A vacancy for a receptionist is closed, a vacancy for a specialist in chatbots and virtual assistance with advanced knowledge in prompts opens. A vacancy for a financial analyst closes, a vacancy opens for a specialist in financial modeling and data forecasting to support business decisions, using AI. For this, the person will need to know several platforms and programming in Python. Are there several people with this knowledge? No. But a person with that knowledge will produce for a team of dozens of analysts. So here we have a clear case of opportunity for one and a not very promising scenario for others.
In your book, you highlight the importance of critical thinking and empathy even as artificial intelligence advances. How can we balance the use of technology with essential human skills?
Two of the most important human skills are critical thinking and empathy. Critical thinking is an essential human skill that allows us to ask questions, identify gaps in information and form our own opinions. This is especially important in the AI Age, where we are constantly bombarded with information and need to be able to discern between truth and distortion. AI can be programmed to simulate empathy, but it lacks life experience and subjective understanding as a human being, limiting its ability to understand and respond appropriately to an individual’s emotional nuances and complexities. That is, these are the most important human skills. Critical thinking is the ability to think logically and objectively, and to evaluate information critically. Empathy is the ability to understand and share another person’s feelings. These skills are essential for making good decisions, solving problems, building relationships, and even building new products.
To balance the use of technology with these essential human skills, it is important that both individuals and companies take a conscious and intentional approach. This can include learning new technologies and tools, as well as honing uniquely human skills. Businesses also have an important role to play, being transparent about how and where AI is being used, and offering training and support to their employees so they can adapt to change.
Furthermore, it is important to recognize that technology, while useful, cannot fully satisfy our emotional and social needs. We need to cultivate authentic relationships, understanding and caring for others… valuing the richness of face-to-face interactions. By prioritizing connection, we can create a healthy balance between technological efficiency and the human condition. It is possible to enjoy the best of both worlds.
What are the main ethical concerns related to the use of artificial intelligence and how can we responsibly address them?
Artificial intelligence (AI) brings with it a number of potential ethical risks. The most significant of these is the perpetuation and amplification of biases of discrimination and prejudice. This risk is accentuated by AI’s tendency to be trained on datasets collected by our societies over time, reflecting current cultural, social and political dominance.
A dangerous implication of this trend is the threat to cultural diversity and pluralism. AI, with its algorithm based on maximizing probability, can favor common behaviors and beliefs found in training data – which are often collected from majority and highly connected populations. This can result in a systemic bias against minority societies, their distinctive cultures and customs.
This bias can create a kind of “digital assimilation”, where AI-generated responses conform to the dominant cultural norm rather than reflect the diversity and plurality of our global societies. Future generations, increasingly influenced by AI, may end up adopting habits and beliefs more in line with the prevailing culture, to the detriment of their own traditions. This already happened with the advent of the internet, and it intensifies now.
This risk of cultural homogenization through AI is particularly alarming when we consider how central technology has become to our everyday lives and to shaping our perceptions of the world. If this issue is not addressed, we risk a “digital erasure” of minority cultures, where the voices, traditions and worldviews of minority societies are marginalized or forgotten.
Therefore, to approach AI responsibly, it is essential that we consider cultural representation. To do this, we must ensure that the datasets used to train AI models are representative of human diversity. This includes diversity in terms of race, gender, age, culture, religion, geographic location, and so on. We need mathematical models that take this factor into account when calculating a response. In addition, we urgently need regulations and policies on the subject. We need laws that govern the use of AI, with an emphasis on protecting against discrimination and preserving cultural diversity. This could include guidelines on how AI models are trained and tested, and imposing penalties for inappropriate AI use.
How can artificial intelligence like ChatGPT be efficiently applied in healthcare and education? What are the benefits that this technology brings to these sectors?
These two sectors are hugely impacted by AI, so much so that they feature prominently in my book. Let’s start with health, we can mention a very interesting study published in April 2023 by JAMA Medicina Interna that revealed that 80% of patients preferred to be attended by a robot. This study highlights the growing acceptance of AI in healthcare. That is, AI can make healthcare systems smarter, faster and more efficient. The use of ChatGPT for natural language generation can improve engagement and communication between patients, healthcare professionals and the robots can create a fluid interaction between these parties. Additionally, chats using ChatGPT technology can be applied to healthcare administration to automate administrative tasks such as scheduling appointments,
In education, AI has great potential to help teachers and students. ChatGPT, for example, can provide personalized support to students, answering individual questions and offering clear and detailed explanations. This promotes more efficient and personalized learning. As I teach in my book, a teacher or school can create a Bot that helps a student do a job or answer a question, without necessarily providing the answer. The Bot can act like a teacher and stimulate the student’s thinking, making him come up with the answer by himself. AI can also identify learning gaps and create individual teaching plans for students, which is practically impossible for a teacher without AI knowledge.
You mention in the book the importance of constantly updating HelBot. How do you see the future of machine learning and continuous improvement of AI technologies?
This brings us back to question number three, where we talked about the importance of critical thinking. In a world where information is always available and updated, the difference is in the way you ask questions and, above all, in the way you assimilate the answer. If you ask the same question to Bard from Google, or Chatgpt from OpenIA, you will get different answers and it is up to you to understand the context and any errors in the answers, which will be corrected by asking the question differently. That is, just as Helbot gave a unique experience to the reader, where he has a book whose content practically never ends, the challenge is for the reader to know how to use these tools and no longer to spend hours looking for content.
What are the main challenges companies face when adopting artificial intelligence in their processes and how can they overcome them?
The biggest challenges today are not the technology or the cost to acquire it, but the companies’ lack of in-house technical skills to implement and manage AI solutions. I see in the market that this problem is accentuated in the company’s top management who, often due to ignorance on the subject, understand AI as “a wave that will pass” and therefore does not prepare and does not prepare its team. The adoption of AI will require significant changes to the way a company operates, which may cause employee resistance. To overcome this, companies must clearly communicate the benefits of AI by investing in training and education for their staff, or looking to partner with AI vendors or expert consultants.
From a technology challenge standpoint, for deeper adoption, data quality and access is the biggest issue as AI relies on massive amounts of data. However, many companies struggle with unstructured, inaccessible, or low-quality data. Another point is the integration with existing systems. Integration between new AI solutions and existing systems or processes can be complex and disruptive.
To reduce this impact, the company should use a step-by-step approach, starting with pilot projects and gradually scaling, identifying data needs and integrations. I recommend never starting with the company’s core processes, but with peripheral processes, giving the company knowledge and skill in the matter.
In addition to ChatGPT, what other AI technologies do you believe will have a significant impact in the coming years? What are the trends we should follow?
Today’s AIs are generative, that is, they don’t analyze a problem in depth, they use extensive training and find similarity between what you wrote and the data it was trained with. Because of this, she is very good at writing texts, but not so much at solving real problems. Google and other technology companies have been working hard in this area of resolving AIs and I believe that in 2023, at the latest in early 2024, we will have access to the first ones. These AIs will have even greater impact than what we’ve seen so far. Today we can already test some of these experiments on platforms that simulate this problem solving, such as AutoGPT or AgentGPT. You pass a challenge and she, alone, analyzes all the variables and presents you with an answer or plan to solve that problem.
Regarding the current ones, technologies such as ChatGPT, Bart or even GPT native AIs such as the OpenIA Playground, will give professionals a great advantage.
What is the role of companies and professionals in preparing for the future of working together with artificial intelligence? What skills and knowledge are essential in this context?
We can list many things that a company could do, but to be objective, I recommend starting with the basics. Encourage discovery and testing of AI in the workplace, allow employees to learn as they work, develop hands-on skills that often won’t be immediately gained on first use, but will build employee familiarity with AI. Some companies are banning the use of AIs like ChatGPT in the company. I challenge any manager to give me a reason that makes sense. This is happening solely because of managers’ ignorance of thinking that the AI is learning from their data, which is technically impossible.
To avoid mistakes like this, the company should invest in internal training programs that help employees understand and apply AI technologies. This can include workshops, online courses and seminars on relevant topics. It is also important that this training is continued and updated regularly to keep pace with technology developments.
Mentoring and coaching are also great. Establishing mentoring and coaching programs can help employees learn new skills from more experienced colleagues or even external professionals in a more personalized and targeted way.
How do you see the future of the interface between technology and business? What are the prospects and opportunities that arise with the advancement of artificial intelligence and other technologies?
We live in a world where the price of services and products and even wages are often based on production hours, the difficulty of solving a problem, the urgency rate, etc. What happens when these factors become irrelevant? It turns out that many possibilities arise, such as cost reduction, increased offer of personalized products, increased company productivity. With so many benefits, the market will be pushed into this new world and those who are not will face a difficult future without many possibilities. In the case of companies, they will fight for customers. In the case of employees, for jobs or opportunities, being able to keep the weak ones, with little professional or financial impact.
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