Key points:

Today, I’d like to digress from my usual opening. I asked Bard (Google's experimental AI chat service) to write this article’s opening paragraph for me.

Here’s the reply:

Not perfect but still good! Just let me add a few things.

So, what is generative AI?

Generative ‘artificial’ ‘intelligence’ describes algorithms that can be used to create new content from vast amounts of data that they are trained in. It takes a few seconds to generate an essay, a computer code, an email, an Excel formula, a funny image and so on.

For example, ChatGPT can be used to generate personalized marketing materials or to write news articles. DALL-E can be used to create brand new pics and product designs or to produce visual effects for movies and TV shows.

Wanna see a Raphael painting of the Madonna and Child eating pizza? Sure, check out this masterpiece created by DALL-E below:

On the subject of chatbots, I suppose everyone has heard of ChatGPT. However, it’s only one of many. Here’s a list of noteworthy alternatives:

Same for Midjourney - the most popular image generation tool. Let me name a few other art generators:

Let’s dive deeper! What does all this mean for businesses?

A 2022 McKinsey survey found that AI adoption has more than doubled in the past 5 years and investment in AI is also significantly on the rise. This suggests that businesses are increasingly recognizing the power of AI to improve their operations and bottom lines.

That’s to say, we’re at a massive inflection point for worker productivity.

Here’s one interesting experiment that was published last month:

Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm, was testing the impacts of AI on its employees. 758 consultants were involved in the experiment. Tasks were randomly assigned one of 3 conditions: no AI access, GPT-4 AI access or GPT-4 AI access with a prompt engineering overview.

For each one of a set of 18 realistic consulting tasks within the frontier of AI’s capabilities, the consultants using AI were significantly more productive:

![Source: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4573321#

](https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/dlK0B6h0M0XLk1SRx1Q2XAXyi6y2-jid3ugo.jpeg)

Generative AI is still a relatively new technology but it has the potential to impact on our lives in a major way. As generative AI models become more powerful and versatile, we can expect to see even more innovative and groundbreaking applications in the years to come.

Here are some tips on how businesses can get started with generative AI:

Many companies around the world are actively testing AI tools and we can already see the first batch of use cases from across various domains.

A few ideas every CEO should consider for automating & accelerating work and creating an early impact:

A good first step is to assemble a cross-functional team that includes data scientists, legal experts and functional business leads. This team can think through some basic questions about generative AI, such as:

Here are some additional tips for companies considering the use of generative AI:

To sum up, generative AI is a powerful technology with the potential to revolutionize many industries. However, business leaders should be cautious when adopting it as it raises a number of ethical and practical concerns. By carefully considering the potential benefits and risks, companies can position themselves to take advantage of this technology, both in the short and long term.