Fear of technology, and change, has again gripped Wall Street. I am not talking about declining tech valuations. Recently, a large bank (followed by others) banned the use of ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot made available by OpenAI. Banned it completely. The reporting suggests that the bank did not seek to understand how the technology works, how it could make work better/faster/cheaper, or even whether any harm had occurred. In fact, according to news reports, the bank didn’t even know how many employees used ChatGPT.
This technophobic behavior is so familiar. In the 1990s, many companies waited too long to use websites because they were a dangerous fad. Law firms prohibited email for years over “privilege concerns” even after the clients had already adopted this newfangled communications tool. Many companies still ban the use of text and Slack for business communications because Compliance hasn’t figured out how to monitor. This reflexive banning is the technological analog of a book burning: rather than deal with the ideas, we’ll just ban them and feel safer. The Luddites always resist new technologies, change, and advancement in favor of the status quo.
MY TAKE: Let’s do the heavy lifting to understand and work with this potentially great tool before mindlessly banning it. In the absence of proven harm, let’s all give it some test runs and see what happens and then deal with the real consequences, not the possible problems. The more we use the tool, the more data we will have on its benefits and its drawbacks. It appears that AI generated content could make our work more efficient and productive. Do we really need a human being to spend hours of drudgery drafting a registration statement, the guts of a research report, a compliance manual, a training manual, product instructions, and all the other corporate documents that require virtually no creativity. Certainly, a sentient human should review and refine the output, but I don’t see any reason why AI can’t produce a first cut.
Many years ago, we had to go to a financial printer and camp out overnight to prepare registration statements. When digital printing came along, some of the old timers warned against typos and misstatements. To quote them, “Balderdash!” Digital printing was better, cheaper, faster. AI generated content takes document production to the next level.
Business leaders must also hear, but not necessarily listen to, their army of compliance professionals and lawyers. Sure, banning a technology is less risky and makes their jobs easier. It also runs serious risk that your business will not compete against firms willing to do the real work of understanding and implementing a revolutionary technology. In other words, let’s read the book and discuss it before it throwing it on the bonfire.