According to Similarweb, a provider of business website analytics services, OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, is currently the 17th most popular website in the world as of May. This is a higher number of visits than Netflix and Linkedin during the same period. What makes this achievement even more remarkable is that it was achieved with the most basic UI that only allows copy and paste, and, unlike other competitive sites, the lack of a mobile web presence.

And on May 18, a related mobile app was released on the US Apple App Store.

What we should pay attention to regarding this new mobile app release is that it is equipped with Whisper, a speech-to-text conversion model. In other words, the connection to generative AI has gone beyond the physical limitations of being in front of a monitor, and the expanded data format that includes voice as well as text will likely add visual data recognition such as photos or videos, which means generative AI that exchanges opinions anytime, anywhere through existing mobile and wearable devices will be directly entering our daily lives.

Therefore, rather than the numerous concerns and discussions about the appropriateness of generative AI’s responses and its risks as an entity that clashes with human existence, it is becoming increasingly important to focus on how to live with these new partners. In particular, in the workplace, public institutions are already distributing ChatGPT user manuals to their employees, and certain departments within companies are receiving somewhat daunting requests to submit plans for applying AI to work.

However, it is important to remember that these responses from institutions and businesses are based on the business maxim of the 3-legged stool that has been maintained since the 1960s. In the past, organizational change was considered a harmony between three elements: People, Processes, and Tools or Technology (PPT), with the adjustments of one leg to maintain the balance of the chair when another leg changed. But is it still reasonable to consider these elements separately, even in the current situation where new possibilities are emerging every day through interactions between people and AI tools?

A new perspective is offered by ‘Actor-Network Theory’ (ANT). ANT is a theory that explains the approach to studying social and technological systems developed in the early 1980s by Bruno Latour and others. We tend to think of only humans as actors with agency, and non-human entities like things as passive entities used to achieve goals, but in this perspective, anything that influences other entities can be granted the status of an actor. This means, at least at the starting point, considering ‘things’ as equal to people.

If we apply ANT to the future work environment with generative AI, we can think of organizations as ‘networks composed of human and non-human actors.’ Human actors are employees who work together to achieve the organization's goals, and all of this would be impossible without non-human actors such as offices, computers, and coffee machines. Anyone who has used ChatGPT can recognize this mutual influence by being educated through chat, learning from chat, and seeing ideas generated. A 2023 MIT study of 444 office workers who had experienced working with ChatGPT found that the tool significantly improved overall work efficiency by reducing brainstorming time at the beginning of tasks, allowing for faster draft writing and a more focused use during the final editing process.

In the future, it will be a reality that requires more experimental perspectives and attitudes from organizational and departmental leaders.

In response, it is necessary to consider shortening the time for reviewing work processes. AI is already making changes in the workplace, such as marketing, public relations, and translation, but organizations are still focusing on the individual use of AI by employees. Viewing this as a change for the entire department and considering the readjustment of the entire process can lead to better work efficiency in terms of management integration and performance analysis.

It is also necessary to recognize and acknowledge that the subject of work using generative AI is the sum of two entities that grow together, a hybrid. This will help determine the use of ChatGPT's constantly upgraded features by employees and allow for faster responses to regulations and controls from OpenAI or government and AI-related agencies.

It is difficult to predict where generative AI innovation will lead. But businesses and teams that think in terms of dynamic networks and hybrid actors will have the opportunity to continuously seize advantageous positions in this ongoing wave of change.

*This article is the original content from ETNews Columnpublished on May 22nd, 2023.

References

Similarweb.com about Open ai

Introducing the ChatGPT app for iOS

The way we work is about to change

Experimental Evidence on the Productivity Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence

Actor–network theory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠