HK Leaders Explore ChatGPT Despite It Being Unavailable
- By Sheila Lam
- February 27, 2023
Writing poems, love letters, and being woke: ChatGPT has become the latest technology sensation to dominate media headlines. On top of the amusing and eerily human responses, this chatbot prototype developed by OpenAI has also made its way to Hong Kong businesses, driving practical benefits.
Despite not being officially available in the city, many have been exploring ChatGPT using VPN. It has even prompted Hong Kong University to ban students from using this AI tool for coursework and assessment.
Meanwhile, some digital leaders have started developing practical use cases of this latest tech celebrity for their organizations.
Make ChatGPT real for business
“HKBN is running several concrete proof-of-concepts,” said Samuel Hui, HKBN’s co-owner and Enterprise Solutions chief strategy officer. Hui said the telco and technology solution provider is planning to apply ChatGPT’s language mode on specific data sets to create a chatbot.
“We think this would be super helpful for customers looking for a real use case beyond ‘enhanced Google search,’ demonstrating our capabilities as a solution powerhouse,” he added.
As a partner of OpenAI, Microsoft has been supporting the training of ChatGPT and offering enterprises AI models for building digital services. This offering has made it easy for enterprises to integrate and take advantage of ChatGPT almost instantly.
“[It is a] no-brainer to use ChatGPT services,” said Andy Chun, vice president of the Hong Kong Computer Society and the regional director for technology innovation at Prudential. “There are many useful applications that we can use right now.”
Chun noted that Prudential was also taking advantage of ChatGPT for internal productivity gain.
Insurance is a highly regulated and process-oriented industry, so the company is looking to leverage ChatGPT’s machine learning capabilities to support its employees for inquiries. It has the potential to offer the appropriate data, forms, and processes to perform specific tasks, like customer KYC or claim applications.
Chun added that the company’s developers could also take advantage of ChatGPT for programming code generation and to review potential application bugs.
ChatGPT’s self-review
Chun noted that ChatGPT’s versatile capability to write codes and poetry and simulate conversations is unsurprising. He added that the availability of cloud computing has contributed to the speed of machine learning and algorithm processing.
Having the prototype freely available for individuals and the online viral sharing of their experiences with ChtatGPT are also the reasons for its sensational popularity, said Chun. The excitement (and sometimes amusement) from ChatGPT’s responses also trigger more creative applications.
One of them is to answer media inquiries. To answer CDOTrends' query about the potential applications of ChatGPT at Prudential, Chun asked ChatGPT for some suggested answers.
When asked to review ChatGPT’s potential applications in the insurance industry, it offered comprehensive answers like a chatbot for customer service, risk assessment and underwriting, and fraud detection. In addition, ChatGPT was also able to self-review its potential challenges for the insurance industry. On top of raising issues like data privacy, integration with legacy systems, and accuracy, it was also able to provide suggestions.
“Overall, the successful implementation of ChatGPT in the insurance industry requires careful consideration of these challenges and strategies to mitigate them. Insurers must balance the potential benefits of ChatGPT with potential risks and challenges and ensure they are using this technology in a responsible and ethical manner,” said the chatbot.
Wise words, indeed.
Double the time for creativity
The popularity of ChatGPT has sparked interest among business users to explore its application. Hui from HKBN said they are hosting lunch-and-learns and hackathons with their in-house talent pool and partners to explore the different creative use of ChatGPT and other technologies.
“We see many productivity-enhancing use cases for different facets of our organization,” he said. Some of the examples include supporting sales engineers to generate document outlines and build a comprehensive statement of work template or consulting framework. AI could also develop product comparisons for product specialists as a first-draft analysis of different technology vendors and brands.
“In short, if a talent is doing 30% value-creation work (e.g., ideas generation, business planning, personal networking) and 70% menial work (e.g., reports generation, first draft), we see ChatGPT flipping the equation,” he said. “Imagine a world where we can spend double the time doing meaningful value accretive work that only humans can do.”
Chun also noted ChatGPT’s potential to empower creativity. With the ability to carry a conversation, the AI engine can offer suggestions and comments in the human creation process, enabling human-machine co-creation.
Prompt engineering for accuracy
While the potential of ChatGPT is promising, it is not without its risk in a practical business environment.
Chun said ChatGPT is good at summarizing information within a fixed perimeter but not necessarily accurate when incorporating background and context to provide insights. Hence, early adoption is more appropriate for internal information searches or summarizing legal documents.
“Accuracy can still be an issue,” he said. “It is important to understand the limitation of machines. Humans should always be involved to review and verify the information before acting upon it.”
In addition, AI engines like ChatGPT are continuously learning from answering different inquiries. Chun said understanding the discipline of prompt engineering — providing AI systems with carefully selected input and questions — could help achieve more accurate and desired answers.
After all, ChatGPT is merely a tool. Hui said it relies on humans and our continuously innovative mindset to transcend its applications.
“ChatGPT is well-equipped to give B or C grade answers, and it’s up to human talents to fine-tune these answers into A grade,” he said. “With the right tools enabled, top innovators will quickly and continuously come up with use cases beyond our imagination to make their lives easier, while bottom performers continue to hand in C-grade homework that would gradually be replaced by ChatGPT.”
Sheila Lam is the contributing editor of CDOTrends. Covering IT for 20 years as a journalist, she has witnessed the emergence, hype, and maturity of different technologies but is always excited about what's next. You can reach her at [email protected].
Image credit: iStockphoto/metamorworks