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ChatGPT, a new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, has recently taken the internet by storm globally. Experts believe that it may take over the jobs of some IT-related businesses and freelancers in Bangladesh unless they learn to leverage the technology strategically.
This AI chatbot will replace many types of jobs, especially in ICT and the creative world with its trained responses, alongside creating new horizons of work for business entities, global experts have said.
According to the latest MLIV Pulse survey, advanced AI systems are expected to eventually replace some jobs in the financial, media, legal and technology sectors in future.
Experts said, in Bangladesh where internet penetration is low and IT-related businesses and freelancers are low or mediocre performers, ChatGPT may take over some jobs as it automates many tasks currently being performed by human beings.
They have urged lower or medium-range workers to upgrade their skills or shift to another career to survive.
Experts also said that in light of this new technology, businesses need to think about how they are operating, what products and services they offer, and how AIs like ChatGPT could enhance workflows and deliver better customer experiences in a changed business scenario.
If the country cannot take advantage of the latest technology at its early stage, both professionals like freelancers and businesses will fall into trouble in the fast-changing world.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT, or Chat Generative Pre-training Transformer, is a large language model that can generate human-like text, trained on a massive dataset of written works from the internet up to 2021.
Developed by San Francisco-based AI research company OpenAI, the AI bot was released in November 2022. Since then, the platform’s number of users has been rapidly increasing. It gathered one million users within only five days, faster than any other internet tool so far.
Based on any prompts, ChatGPT can give feedback in a few seconds with unique answers in an organised way, be it poems, songs, articles or computer code for making new applications.
The creator of Gmail and Google AdSense, Paul Buccheit, has predicted that ChatGPT will destroy Google Search first, and its ancillary services within the next two years.
ChatGPT and businesses
According to Forbes magazine, chat-based AI tools can create enormous opportunities for companies that leverage the technology strategically.
Chat-based AI can augment how humans work by automating repetitive tasks based on a prompt, while providing more engaging interactions with users like compiling research, drafting marketing content, brainstorming ideas, writing computer code, automating sales processes, providing customised instructions, translating texts, increasing customer engagement, etc.
Businesses can use ChatGPT technology to generate responses for their customer service chatbots, so they can automate many tasks typically done by humans and radically improve response time.
According to an Opus Research report, 35 per cent of consumers want to see more companies using chatbots — and 48 per cent of consumers do not care whether a human being or an automated chatbot helps them with a customer service query.
Curse or blessing?
Khalid Farhan, a Dublin-based Bangladeshi entrepreneur, digital marketer and agency operator, said, “ChatGPT has changed the internet’s overall landscape. New companies have started to grow based on the super upgraded AI technology.”
Bangladesh has 6.5 lakh freelancers and more than 2,000 firms that provide IT and IT-enabled services worldwide.
But according to Farhan, people with average work quality will be replaced. Especially in a third-world country like Bangladesh, where many freelancers mainly do low-tier jobs needing little brain power, will suffer the most.
“Low-grade works like data entry, lead generation and graphic designing will be replaced by ChatGPT. It is being said that at least half of the average type of jobs will be replaced by AI. This year will be of AI and business building based on AI. Ten to 15 AI-based companies are being built every day,” he predicted.
“The companies or professionals in Bangladesh that will adapt early will remain in the race, otherwise, they will be compelled to surrender to their competitors who will,” he added.
Software development company Brain Station 23 CEO Raisul Kabir said, “ChatGPT is an important and timely technology. What we need now is to know the usage of the technology and engage people relating to it.
“However, we will manage to overcome future challenges. It will not replace mediocre people; rather we will get high performance from average people. Several types of work will potentially decline, while it will add multiple dimensions of works by enabling people.”
As an example, he clarified that at Brain Station, they have senior programmers who need junior programmers. ChatGPT will be able to help those senior programmers, replacing some junior programmers for drafting codes and other work. This will not ultimately reduce business efficiency but it will boost business performance.
“Already, one of the global companies we work with has asked us to add ChatGPT to their applications. We have integrated it as per their requirements. ChatGPt has limited knowledge, so human touch is still needed for a perfect output,” he added.
Adaptation recommended
Fahim Mashroor, the CEO and co-founder of Bdjobs.com, said, “A subtle technology like ChatGPT involves AI, machine learning, deep learning, etc, and we already lag in terms of many things like internet penetration,
AI expertise.
“It will take time to grab the earlier adaptation benefits. If we do not start right now, our productivity may go down.”
“By adapting to it, we will be able to improve customer service quality, and both demands will be wider and opportunity will be extended, thus the company will be bigger, which will again employ relevant people,” he said.
“We will not need any arrangements to train up like we did not need training for Google searches. Rather, after the ChatGPT fully arrives, some low-grade performers like data entry personnel or draft writers will have to prepare for improving their skills,” Fahim added.
The government agencies can make arrangements for boosting skill-based training to cope with it, he added. “The faster our adaptation is, the more benefited we will be.”
Dhaka University’s Institute of Information Technology (IIT) Professor BM Mainul Hossain said, “The search engine already gives the information which the ChatGPT gives us now.
“It is not the only exciting AI-based technology. There are several other technologies too. But what happened now is it has connected mass people. Some low-grade jobs will still be available. For example, foreign companies will still hire people from Bangladesh to help them with ChatGPT,” he said.
He continued, “Of course, any new technology cuts jobs, but it brings huge opportunities too. We have to prepare for harnessing those scopes. The hype of ChatGPT will not last long, it will stabilise after a while. Businesses have to decide how they will choose a better experience.”
