Current press coverage is full of articles and columns extolling the advantages of AI in business.  These articles form a counterpoint to the scare risk scenarios which grabbed the early headlines.  The gist is that at least in its current form, GAI can speed reasonably simple but time-consuming tasks.  Articles have appeared very recently in the NYTimes, Boston Globe and in the current issue of Boston Business Journal.

The BBJ coverage is revealing, in making an excellent case for the controlled utilization of ChatGPT on the part of founders of early-stage companies.  The highlighted entrepreneurs, all in their mid-thirties, claim spectacular time savings in such tasks as: analyzing and comparing big-company franchise agreements against other franchise agreements to identify differences for clients; designing sales materials for digital platforms; building presentations; using Chatbox as a customer, practicing interactions.

Surely these are modest undertakings by modest enterprises, and surely large enterprises are or will be more intense users and at higher levels of output.  It is unclear whether the fear of GAI ‘hallucinations” (inventions of facts) is of concern in applications such as suggested here.  It seems that today’s folks are relying on either comparing extant texts or phrasing or modeling given data (eg, inputting clear instructions and asking GAI to phrase, package, prepare for posting the facts/ideas given).

Then there was the article I read over the weekend, not sure where, about a  person who had chatbox write a get-well-soon poem to someone who was ailing.  Seems it was so literate and uplifting that the writer now has  used chatbox for many personal messages.  Perhaps the folks who write Hallmark cards should begin to worry…

And as to the last thought, given the nature of modern poetry, where fact and fiction free-associate without necessarily making a linear narrative, it sounds like chatbox may be the next Walt Whitman.  As someone who has published five books of poetry and sits on the board of the New England Poetry Club, I personally have, indeed, begun to worry that one day we will give an annual poetry award (we grant several) to a circuit board.