My personal journey with generative AI (GenAI) has been somewhat circuitous and definitely worthwhile.
I’ve gone from “WOW, what a neat, shiny, whizbang toy … let’s use it!” to a nose-wrinkling “trough of disillusionment,” to being wowed again by the technology. But it’s a more informed “wow” now: I see use cases where GenAI makes sense, and better understand how to apply it and its vast potential.
The Problem With GenAI Usage Today
Tapping into that potential means we need to stop looking at GenAI myopically: as only an efficiency driver or provider of quick answers to one-off questions or a way to quickly draft content. Too many people and businesses simply use ChatGPT and other GenAI tools like a search tool or a handy tool to write short-form content. To be clear, these are valid and valuable uses. But you can’t fully harness the technology until you think bigger and do more.
The Age Of GenAI Enlightenment
The Age of GenAI Enlightenment means looking at GenAI not just in terms of how it can make us faster—but also how it can make us stronger, smarter, more creative people. To that end, the real power is when you use it consultative-ly: letting GenAI use all the data it has access to, along with information about you, to help you make better decisions.
When you reset your mentality—recognizing you have free, anytime access to the world’s foremost consultant and expert, and exploiting that—the results can be mind-blowing.
I’ve seen this in my personal life, with GPTs on my phone and computer. Engaging with them almost makes you feel like Iron Man interacting with JARVIS—getting immediate, actionable suggestions. To that end, I’ve seen GenAI be:
A sounding board and “therapist.” As a dad to two girls (ages 14 and 12), I feel out of my element sometimes and ask GenAI for ideas, approaches and suggestions. It remembers my history and suggests things to try, in a “consider this …” way. (Based on my settings and since I pay for ChatGPT Plus, I have better control over data privacy.)
A source of medical advice and support. A family member of mine was recently involved in an accident. When you’re looking for authoritative medical information, Googling can take time and cause you to spiral. But ChatGPT was a big help: explaining and distilling relevant info, making sense of X-rays and “physician-speak,” and providing advice on how my relative’s life might change and how I could support them. GenAI never grows tired of your questions, and as situations like this one evolve, it can move with you (e.g., from doctor to therapist perspectives).
Multiple personal assistants. Across work and home lives, we all have a million things going on. A new executive at my company uses her “team of GPTs” to help with parenting, work and personal tasks, strategy, etc.—ultimately leveling up impact across all these areas.
GenAI In Business And Investor Relations
Often when we see the power of something in our personal lives, we understand the benefits of applying it to business too.
I work with professionals in investor relations (IR)—an area that hasn’t been as quick to adopt GenAI, due in part to conservative aspects of the role, and the often-sensitive data IR pros deal with. However, as more market-leading companies lean into AI across all functions, IR teams are also experimenting with it in different ways: for summarizing news and transcripts, conducting sentiment analysis, drafting emails and earning scripts, and more. While these were advanced use cases not long ago, things are changing quickly as new use cases emerge—with AI becoming more of a thought partner and collaborator to the role.
To achieve this next level, you first need to ensure you have the AI set up in a secure way—not using your data to train the model and not sharing any sensitive information to broader audiences. This is key in the highly regulated world of investor relations.
Assuming your setup is secure, when you give GenAI access to larger and larger datasets—combining public data, material nonpublic information that GenAI accesses from your company and/or personal data (e.g., internal reports, calendar details, meeting notes, etc.) and proprietary vendor data (e.g., engagement analytics)—the AI becomes more powerful and useful. All of this information creates a highly actionable data lake from which GenAI can extract strategic information. In the context of IR, this could mean prompting GenAI for things like:
Ways to target new investors (with GenAI analyzing engagement data, identifying potential investors/contact info, drafting outreach, etc.).
Analyst meeting prep (summarizing interaction histories, synthesizing recent reports and social posts, pulling bios into a prep document, etc.).
Earnings call preparation (suggesting the top 10 likely questions from analysts based on previous transcripts, reports and news articles, etc.).
Ways to stay ahead of the curve (with AI bringing to the fore “Tasks for the Week,” “Top 5 Ways to Increase Our Company’s Valuation,” “Analysis of Our Stock Price Drivers” and so on).
And a lot more exciting possibilities.
Staying Future-Ready
Many businesses today are seeing the fruits of GenAI; a recent Harvard study showed a 40% performance boost among enterprise workers with GPT-4.
There are more benefits to come. In its predictions for 2024, Gartner stated that “every strategic conversation needs to include GenAI.” This is prescient and absolutely correct.
There’s an inevitable and impending separation coming between those businesses that don’t use GenAI (or don’t use it to its potential) and those that do: thinking outside the box to apply it effectively, consultatively and strategically. When you use GenAI in that way, you’re in the best position to tackle important challenges, create opportunities and drive meaningful results. Then, you’ve truly entered the Age of GenAI Enlightenment.
This article was originally published by Forbes Finance Council.
