AI Chatbots have arrived and we will never be same. The AI chatbot ChatGPT can answer questions in such amazing detail and impeccable language that it has sent shockwaves throughout the education and creative industries which worry about rampant student cheating and displaced copywriters and journalists. Less talked about is the unprecedented potential of this kind of AI tool to level the global communicative playing field in the research and business domains that are dominated by English.
2023 will be remembered as the year of the AI chatbot.
This technology took a quantum leap last November when San Francisco-based OpenAI released ChatGPT, which has already gained over 100M active users , making it the fastest-growing commercial app in history [1]. Microsoft has invested US$10 billion in Open AI [2] and just incorporated ChatGPT into its Edge Browser [3]. In response, Google’s Sundar Pichai issued a “code red” to hasten the release of their own AI tools like LaMDA and a chatbot called Bard [4], which will formally be released in the coming weeks [5], along with Baidu’s own AI chatbot called Ernie Bot [6] .
What is ChatGPT?
So, how does ChatGPT work? It is currently the largest language model to date with over 175 billion parameters and uses transformer architecture to generate high-quality human-like text responses due to its fine-tuning with human trainers. This is why its answers are flawless in language and very useful in meaning.
As a research and writing assistant, it can potentially save business people, researchers, students, and everybody else a lot of time and increase their productivity.
On the other hand, ChatGPT can also be used to avoid doing work, like cheating students using it to do their assignments, and workers asking it to write reports and emails without properly checking the content. Buyer beware: the content sometimes contains surprising mistakes–not language mistakes, but information mistakes.
As with all technology, ChatGPT certainly has its drawbacks. But as a language and communication trainer in Taiwan for over 25 years, I see the tremendous potential of this AI assistant to “level the communicative playing field” in global research and business communications.
ChatGPT can be a personal assistant that can edit your writing and even generate writing. This can save tremendous amounts of time, and therefore money. You can ask ChatGPT to write emails, summarize texts, and even rewrite texts more simply, with more detail, and even in different styles and tones.
Email writing
Email writing is a necessary daily task for everybody, especially in international business and research. For many Taiwanese, emails often take a long time to write and can reduce their productivity. Or, emails may not be carefully written and result in mistakes or even a rude tone. Either way, email writing can cause unnecessary stress for both writer and reader.
But now you can ask ChatGPT to specifically do things that can save time, ensure correct English and use the proper and respectful tone to build, maintain, or rescue your email relationships.
Tone is especially important because email communication is particularly vulnerable to miscommunication since we cannot see or hear the other person. In this way, you can ask ChatGPT to “reply to this customer complaint in a formal and polite way and apologize for being unable to deliver the goods on time: [copy-and-paste original email]”.
After a few seconds, you have a complete email. Of course, you should double check the contents and add specific context details, but having this first draft will not only save you time but also make you look and sound more professional.
Research and summary writing
Research is also a necessary activity for both business people and researchers. This time-consuming process of staying up-to-date with the latest industry news can be streamlined by asking ChatGPT to summarize texts. This will significantly reduce time for both reading and note-taking.
Report and article writing
Report and article writing is even more demanding and can even limit the promotion opportunities of Taiwanese in international organizations who have lower English writing abilities. However, give ChatGPT the main points in English (perhaps use DeepL or Baidu to translate these points into English) and ask it to write a formal business report, research article, and even a LinkedIn article or post. ChatGPT has even been credited as co-author on scientific research papers [7].
Changing the language, changing the tone
Once you have your English email, report, or article, you can even change its tone. You can ask ChatGPT to “rewrite this article in more [formal / academic / casual / conversational / humorous] English: [copy-and-paste article]”. In fact, this command to change the tone can help you kill three birds with one stone:
- ChatGPT will naturally get rid of any incorrect English,
- it will replace awkward phrases with natural sounding ones, and
- it can create the appropriate tone.
ChatGPT’s strength as a language editor of English should not be a surprise.
Since it is based on a 175-billion parameter language model, it is fundamentally a natural language generator and transformer. That is why it is called GPT: “Generative Pretrained Transformer.” It uses a massive amount of text data to statistically predict the next word in a sentence, given the context of the previous words. This makes its language very natural, virtually flawless, and logically coherent over several paragraphs.
However, this fluency can make it sound deceptively authoritative and OpenAI clearly cautions users about this “limitation” on its user interface. Unfortunately, Some news agencies like CNET have learned this the hard way and came under fire for glaring mistakes in articles that it asked AI tools to write [8].
However, if properly used, ChatGPT is the most powerful language tool I have ever seen, which is why I am now training my students in my business language and communication courses how to use it to improve their LinkedIn profiles, cover letters, content marketing, emails, and reports.
AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Google’s soon-to-be-released Bard will be the great levelers of the global communicative playing field: They have the potential to not only save time and money but also give face and empowerment in international English communications–for all researchers and business people, in both large and small organizations. AI chatbots will democratize professional English communication across the world.
参考文献 References
- https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-sets-record-fastest-growing-user-base-analyst-note-2023-02-01/
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-23/microsoft-makes-multibillion-dollar-investment-in-openai
- https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/07/microsoft-updates-its-edge-web-browser-with-built-in-a-i-capabilities/
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidphelan/2023/01/23/how-chatgpt-suddenly-became-googles-code-red-prompting-return-of-page-and-brin/?sh=104dab3a5977
- https://blog.google/technology/ai/bard-google-ai-search-updates/
- https://www.reuters.com/technology/chinas-baidu-finish-testing-chatgpt-style-project-ernie-bot-march-2023-02-07/
- https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00107-z
- https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/01/31/will-chatgpt-and-other-ai-tools-replace-journalists-in-newsrooms
