Businesses and creatives don’t need artificial intelligence solutions to do all their work for them to get value from them.
In many ways, 2023 was the year of GenAI.
ChatGPT, now a household name that is practically synonymous with generative artificial intelligence, made its debut a month before the beginning of the year. And throughout 2023, companies like Google, Anthropic and OpenAI continued to announce improvements in the processing power and capabilities of their products. Suddenly, organizations across industries were expected to have detailed and forward-looking plans on how to use generative AI to transform their businesses.
And yet, for business leaders and creative professionals who have attempted to use GenAI in their work, the experience has often been frustrating. This is partly because GenAI has at times been discussed as a magic button. People think that you can ask ChatGPT to create a marketing plan or write a white paper, and the tool will spit out the business deliverable, fully formed.
But we’re starting to see a recognition that GenAI, at least in its current form, is more useful when humans treat the technology like a collaborator. Organizations such as the software company Autodesk have begun to refer to this model as “AI on the shoulder” — suggesting that GenAI solutions often act less like a sole creator, and more like a highly efficient assistant.