Harnessing AI: What Businesses Need to Know in ChatGPT's Second Year – Harvard Business School Working Knowledge
As a new year begins, the role of artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on the future of work permeates nearly every workplace-related discussion, from diversity, equity, and inclusion goals and venture capital funding to strategic leadership approaches and flexible workforce policies.
How will companies and their employees adjust to the new world of AI? Harvard Business School faculty members take a look at emerging AI trends and offer some advice for businesses on how to make the most of this new technology in 2024.
Throughout 2023, we dedicated considerable effort to assessing whether the recent strides in generative AI were mere fads or indicative of a transformative future. This period was marked by extensive experimentation and exploration of generative AI, a technology that, while nascent, showed exponential growth in both capability and wonder.
Researchers in various contexts demonstrated that generative AI has the potential to enhance productivity (speed and efficiency of task completion), quality (precision in execution), and creativity (albeit with limitations). Notably, the simulation of synthetic humans through large language models allowed us to replicate established experiments, engage with synthetic customers, and potentially uncover consumer insights for market research.
A recurring theme that emerged was the prospect that, at least in the near future, successful outcomes would be achievable through human-AI collaborations rather than through human or AI efforts alone. Looking ahead to 2024, these endeavors are poised to persist. Even in the absence of groundbreaking technological breakthroughs, engaging discussions are expected to unfold around several key topics:
Ayelet Israeli is the Marvin Bower Associate Professor of Business Administration at HBS.
Generative AI surged in 2023, with companies eagerly exploring ways to enhance productivity and creativity. As we step into 2024, this could be the year a new paradigm for collaborative innovation emerges between human and machine intelligence.
Crowdsourcing—a technique using diverse ideas from the masses—is one such area poised for change, research indicates.
For years, companies went outside their boundaries to crowdsource diverse viewpoints and innovative solutions to their most complex solutions. Take the Netflix challenge. In 2006, Netflix launched an open competition for the best collaborative filtering algorithm to predict user ratings for films that could beat Netflix’s own algorithm by 10 percent. Three years later, Netflix announced the grand prize of $1 million to a team besting it by 10.06 percent.
Despite the excitement such challenges generate, they are typically resource-intensive and time-consuming. Generative AI, capable of processing vast datasets with ease, promises a new approach. It can amalgamate insights from diverse perspectives more swiftly and economically than human-driven efforts, representing a wealth of untapped potential for companies addressing complex issues. This efficiency in content creation not only accelerates innovation but also opens up new avenues for strategic problem-solving.
So, what role should humans play? Generative AI’s strength is to develop ideas that will resonate with a broad audience and garner wide market appeal. But it is human ingenuity—fueled by unique experiences and bespoke skills—that holds the key to the most creative and unprecedented solutions, our study indicates.
The future lies not in human versus machine intelligence but in the collective intelligence of both forces, collaborating together to produce high-value ideas that blend human ingenuity with AI’s efficiency and analytical power. As we look ahead, it is clear that the competitive edge belongs to those firms that embrace this partnership.
Picture a scenario where AI serves as the ultimate innovation partner, rapidly prototyping ideas from a vast database of industry trends, past crowdsourcing challenges, market research, and consumer behavior. Humans will then apply their critical thinking and creativity to these AI-generated concepts, refining them with the subtleties of market understanding, ethical judgment, and human intuition.
This partnership offers a reimagined competitive edge, where the embrace of human-AI collaboration becomes a strategic imperative for forward-thinking firms.
Jacqueline Ng Lane is an assistant professor in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at HBS.
The future of work is not just about where people sit. It’s about how AI and digital technologies are enabling a more efficient, innovative, and flexible work environment.
As we step into 2024, it’s imperative for organizations and individuals alike to embrace this digital mindset, redefining the very fabric of our working lives. Key aspects of this digital revolution include:
As we pivot from traditional models, the emerging trend isn’t just about remote or hybrid setups; it’s about how AI and generative technologies are reshaping the very essence of work. I continue to have an abiding faith in everyone’s ability to learn and shape our AI-intensive future.
Tsedal Neeley is the Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration at HBS.
As we approach 2024, generative AI continues to dominate the conversation among executives at the forefront of adapting their companies to new technologies. The focus of that conversation will soon shift from exploring ways that AI can improve efficiency to using AI as a driver of strategic differentiation.
Here are five shifts 2024 may bring:
Andy Wu is the Arjun and Minoo Melwani Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at HBS.
Feedback or ideas to share? Email the Working Knowledge team at hbswk@hbs.edu.
Image: HBSWK/DALL-E
