Another topic stub to pin another series of occasional posts, this time on contemporary issues related to AI in business. The rise of Generative AI (‘GenAI’) and Large Language Models (‘LLMs’) such as ChatGPT looms large over pretty much every company, and every job. This will be a series of opinions and observations based on the broad range of inputs and views that we are all pretty much having to either deal with or ignore all the time.

A year or so ago I tried to share my exasperation relating to what small business owners should know, or needed to know, about these new platforms with some colleagues. I got a very mixed reaction. Some couldn’t see the need or urgency. Others saw the risks to their business and viewed those risks as particular to their own companies or industries. There was a sense of uncertainty around where to find expertise, and how we recognised that expertise. Is this solely a technical matter for business owners and management to deal with? Do we wait to be led by our technology providers, e.g., Copilot-like tools in Word and Excel?

It appears obvious to me there is a lot of uncertainty and anxiety around these new platforms amongst business owners, even if few are open to discussing those fears. I want to tap into those fears to understand the issues as seen by the myriad small business owners that seem to have been largely overlooked by current attention on the use and deployment of AIs.

I’m not sure if having a tech background helps or hinders my journey. Like most business people, I was stunned by the features and capabilities of ChatGPT when it was released less than two years ago (November 2022). My AI exposure had been largely limited to the IBM Watson systems in the 2014/15 timeframe. These systems were severely limited to the narrow set of data they were trained on, and required a high level of skill to use and manage them. While IBM at the time likely had a strong lead in the AI market, I failed to see the rapid development of the latest generation of tools. IBM appears to have squandered their lead in favour of proprietary and narrow systems. Nothing I knew or understood from my exposure to Watson prepared me for this current wave of AI tools.

This series, from where I sit today, is not going to be about Prompt Engineering, or LLM Training, or even the explosion of third-party tools that are emerging that are based on ChatGPT and similar platforms. There are plenty of other sources and newsletters for that. I am going to try and focus on the application of GenAI in business, and in particular, small business.

As always, I like getting feedback on these posts. Let me know your thoughts.