Anyone can use ChatGPT to ask questions or complete tasks, but OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggests that the chatbot is especially beneficial for workers in three specific industries.
Coding is being extensively used and has reached significant usage levels, whose potential for productivity gains we are currently most excited about. During a recent episode of "Unconfuse Me," a podcast hosted by Bill Gates, Altman mentioned that "Healthcare and education are two sectors coming up that curve that we're very excited about, too."
Coding
Altman stated that ChatGPT can help programmers complete their work up to three times faster than usual, aiding in reviewing written code for errors, creating test cases, answering questions from programmers, and even generating entirely new code independently.
The key word is "assist." According to a 2023 study by researchers from Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley, GPT-4, released by OpenAI last year, provides incorrect answers to programming questions nearly half of the time. Coders using ChatGPT for assistance should be careful and verify everything the chatbot suggests, a process that may be quicker than manually performing those tasks.
According to Altman, the aim is not only to help coders finish more work in less time. This boost in productivity is intended to "use more of their brain power and think of totally different things," he said.
Education
AI systems can aid teachers in creating curricula and personalized lesson plans for individual students, saving them time by handling administrative tasks such as tracking attendance or sending automated assignment reminders. They can also be beneficial for learning new languages. Educational technology companies, such as Duolingo, have controversially reported reducing their workforce while increasingly relying on AI.
Gates has praised ChatGPT's potential to support tutoring programs, aiming to enhance access to personalized tutors for students in remote and underserved communities, anticipating that "AIs will get to that ability, to be as good a tutor as any human ever could," said in a keynote talk at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego last April.
Educators have expressed cheating concerns that ChatGPT might pose on assignments. While research has not indicated an increase in cheating, parents and teachers should advise students not to depend solely on AI, as Dr. Tovah Klein, a psychologist at Barnard College, mentioned in an interview with CNBC Make It last year.
Healthcare
OpenAI's chatbot has successfully cleared the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam. However, experts warn that the system's tendency for errors makes it unlikely to be trusted by most patients shortly. However, AI tools can benefit doctors by acting as digital assistants to assist with time-consuming insurance paperwork, which can analyze research, summarize patients' medical histories, and educate medical patients by addressing many of their most commonly asked questions, as stated by Jesse Ehrenfeld, the president of the American Medical Association last year.
Outside of medical practices, Bill Gates wrote in a 2023 blog post that some pharmaceutical companies are employing ChatGPT to automate aspects of the processes involved in discovering and researching new drugs, including AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.
Altman shared the same enthusiasm on Gates' podcast, highlighting that the technology is still in its early stages, "but I think it's worth always putting it in context of this technology that, at least for the next five or ten years, will be on a very steep improvement curve," Altman said.
