By Amine Rahal, a tech entrepreneur and writer. He is currently the CEO of IronMonk Solutions.
Last year saw the release of one of the biggest technological marvels of my lifetime: ChatGPT. After it publicly launched on November 30, my companies had all-hands meetings to discuss how we can adopt this artificial intelligence chatbot to streamline how we do business. Since then, ChatGPT (and its recent successor, GPT-4) has made its presence felt in virtually all aspects of our workplace.
Because ChatGPT is capable of producing human-like text and code, and other OpenAI creations like DALL-E 2 can generate original artworks, many of the creative tasks typically assigned to humans can now be delegated to AI programs. Does that mean entrepreneurs should clean house and send their entire human workforce home? Not at all. At least that’s not what I did. Instead, I’ve leveraged these technologies to streamline our output and make every human on the team more efficient.
Entrepreneurs of tomorrow will have to accommodate AI in their workflow. If they don’t, I don’t think they’ll be competitive enough to go up against those who do. Here are some of the ways in which entrepreneurs can harness AI systems to make their companies more productive and competitive.
Blog Writing
ChatGPT is more than capable of authoring full-length blog posts all on its own, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Why? The text usually turns out to be dry, repetitive and humorless. An AI author is still no match for a skilled human one—at least for now.
Instead, I recommend using AI systems to make blog writing faster and more research-dense. If there’s a particularly fact-heavy part of an article that you’re writing, ask ChatGPT to write that particular section. Then, read the text carefully and edit it to improve flow and continuity before pasting it into your article.
Remember, you want the tone and voice to match in every section of your article. Always double-check whatever output ChatGPT gives you and make changes wherever necessary. You can also paste large segments of your own writing into the ChatGPT prompt and ask it to mimic your unique writing style and tone.
Administrative Assistance
If you need low-level support with content creation, copyediting or simply finding the right phrasing or messaging for an email or press release, ChatGPT can help. Whereas I used to delegate many of these tasks to my administrative assistant, I now free up more of their time by leaning on the expertise of ChatGPT.
For instance, I run any important email to a client or prospect through ChatGPT to make sure there aren’t any typos or tonal errors. Not only has this saved me time I would’ve spent waiting for my assistant’s response, but it has also saved me the embarrassment of having missed a typo!
Survey Support
I often use online platforms to conduct market research surveys. I then share the survey findings on my social feeds or client websites in order to drum up interest in the findings and build organic traffic to the websites.
As a bonus, I like to add ChatGPT’s responses to certain questions. I feel like this can often add an interesting additional perspective to human-generated answers, especially for open-ended qualitative questions, such as “What do you think of the relationship between the stock market and the spot price of Bitcoin?”
ChatGPT is able to provide unique responses that often deviate from those I typically hear from subject matter experts. This appears to be a growing trend, too, as other survey and expert roundups are also starting to include ChatGPT responses.
A/B Testing
If I’m brainstorming a YouTube video title or drafting versions of an Instagram post caption, sometimes I can’t decide between a few options. In the past, I’d fire off my proposed titles or captions to employees or assistants and wait for their response. And while I still do this in most cases, when I’m truly crunched for time, I’ll ask ChatGPT.
ChatGPT tends to prefer titles and captions that have strong calls to action, include a value proposition and are personal. It’s nothing groundbreaking but is a good reminder of what constitutes good marketing copy. So far, it hasn’t failed me.
Eliminating Stock Photos
Goodbye boring, repetitive stock photos, and hello DALL-E 2, an image-generating AI system that creates everything from hyperrealistic photo imagery to abstract artworks. When I need custom art to accompany a blog post, or to come up with a creative thumbnail for a YouTube video, it helps to lean on DALL-E 2 from time to time. Although I find that it is sometimes limited in creating photo-like imagery of people, in my experience it can create super compelling abstract pieces that generate clicks at rates far superior to generic stock images.
Remember that AI is a tool, not a replacement. The best entrepreneurs will use AI to streamline their output and speed up systems that would otherwise depend on time-consuming and tedious human activity. Even the best AI right now cannot replace a qualified human employee in a creative role—rather, it can only enhance what they’re already capable of.
Employers need to keep this in mind as the AI revolution takes off. Keep it human-centered whenever human sensibilities are required. For instance, entrepreneurs may use ChatGPT APIs and other chatbots to handle frontline customer support services. I recommend going against the grain and maintaining a phone number with a real human on the line. This will help your business stand out and build connections between your team and your customers.
In short, entrepreneurs need to know when to use AI and when not to. When in doubt, don’t. But when it comes to mechanical tasks and time-intensive processes like those listed above, you may be better off delegating them to AI to free up more of your time for human-centered work.
