Artificial intelligence is on everyone’s lips: consultants, designers, programmers, administrators, lawyers, artists, students… At technological conferences, practically nothing else is talked about. Without a doubt, this technology will be one of the protagonists of the Mobile World Congress that begins tomorrow in Barcelona.
The main culprit is the ChatGPT platform, which since the end of 2022 has shaken the technology industry in a way that has not happened for a long time. The founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, said it last year: “I had not witnessed such a surprising event since the 1980s, when the graphical interface of computers appeared.”
AI had been in development for decades, but its potential had not been exploited until ChatGPT made available to the masses the ability to experiment for free with generative AI, which is capable of generating text, videos and images as if they were made by a human. In just over a year, the service has seduced 180 million people around the world (a notable figure, but far from WhatsApp’s 2 billion, for example).
According to OpenAI, the company that controls ChatGPT, 92% of the companies in the prestigious Fortune500 index already use its technology. This rapid expansion is the result of the business vision of Sam Altman, an American entrepreneur who at 38 years old has managed to place his business at the top of startups and has achieved a valuation of 80 billion euros for OpenAI, only behind companies such as SpaceX or ByteDance (TikTok).
Despite OpenAI’s popularity, the company is not alone in the AI ??race. Following the success of ChatGPT, an army of platforms has emerged trying to steal market share. Among them, the bets of the large technology companies in the United States stand out: Google has created Gemini; Meta, Code Llama, and the e-commerce giant, Amazon, Q. While Apple maintains secrecy about its system, independent firms such as Anthropic or Cohere have emerged, which have nevertheless received investment support from large technology companies such as Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Salesforce or SK Telecom. In the case of ChatGPT, something similar happens, since Microsoft announced an investment of 10 billion euros in this platform.
With all this offer available, generative AI is beginning to gain speed in the business world, although at the moment the impact on your business is testimonial. As the graph reflects, AI companies have generated $67 million in 2023, a figure that is expected to skyrocket in the coming years. The business model is no mystery: it consists of seducing the user for free and charging commissions for functions that offer more services and advantages.
At the moment ChatGPT has the lead, having been the first to win over the mass public, but this platform does not have to be the winner in this technological race. The consultant Genís Roca, specialized in digital culture and president of Fundació.cat, considers that each company will use one platform or another depending on its needs. “Each economic sector will demand a different service, which will be more or less sophisticated depending on the complexity of the business.” For example: large corporations are going to develop their internal platform to respond to complex calculations while the vast majority of SMEs are going to use simple technology that they will buy from third parties.
In fact, Roca relativizes the impact of AI on small businesses. “It’s not that they are going to fall behind large corporations, it’s that generative AI will be, for all practical purposes, the next update to their software.” The consultant gives as an example the use of the Word and Excel programs, whose US version already includes generative AI functions. The only challenge, Roca points out, will be convincing workers to learn to use this new technology so as not to be left behind.
Despite the available offer and the potential of the technology, “many companies are still in the experimentation phase, testing in which aspects AI is useful and safe and in which aspects it is not yet,” comments Esteve Almirall, professor specialized in innovation at Esade. The risks and limitations of this technology have been repeated on several occasions. Among those that most concern companies are the inaccuracy of results, cybersecurity and data privacy, as reflected in the graph taken from a survey prepared by the consulting firm McKinsey.
Governments are also closely watching the impact of the AI ??algorithm, especially on sensitive data shared by companies and users. In fact, the European Union is preparing a pioneering regulation to limit its effects on privacy and, according to a Stanford study, titled Artificial intelligence report 2023, a total of 127 countries around the world have approved regulations on this technology between 2016. and 2022. Among them, Spain, which already applies in coordination with the European Commission a program (sandbox) that allows companies to experiment with this technology.
While many businesses are experimenting, there are corporations that already use this technology on a regular basis. And, in a few months, they have proven its benefits in terms of efficiency. “Generative AI improves productivity results, but it is detrimental to hiring and employment,” says Almirall. The professor explains that professionals who use AI are more efficient assuming the same workload as always, so they have time left over in their usual work schedule. This phenomenon, he assures, can cause companies to decide to stop hiring or to fire a part of the workers due to the drop in productivity.
In Spain, one of the first cases that set off alarm bells was carried out by the Domestika platform, which fired around thirty people from the marketing and translation departments to replace them with AI. On a global scale, the IBM group has also made a similar move: last year it said it would suspend hiring about 8,000 jobs in the administration and human resources departments. “30% of jobs could be eliminated in the long term,” said CEO Arvind Krishna.
In recent months, multiple studies have appeared that analyze the impact of generative AI on employment. Among them, the Goldman Sachs report, which ensures that a quarter of jobs in the eurozone and the United States are likely to be eliminated.
The ambition, at least of OpenAI, is to go much further. This company considers ChatGPT to be just the beginning of the AI ??career. According to the manifesto posted on his website, Altman has the ambition of creating an artificial general intelligence (which he calls AGI) that is capable of “turbocharging the global economy, elevating humanity by increasing abundance and helping to discover scientific knowledge that changes the world.” limits of possibility.” An utopia? It remains to be seen.
