How ChatGPT affects Swiss companies – A survey from the beginning of January 2023
Background
At the end of 2022, the US company OpenAI released the chatbot ChatGPT and since then the system has been available to all internet users free of charge. ChatGPT is a chatbot, i.e. software that simulates a human conversation. There is a simple input window on the website, just like a search engine. Anyone who registers on the site can type in any question free of charge.
The special thing about ChatGPT is that the system generates texts in just a few seconds that at first glance can hardly be distinguished from those written by real people. The bot writes poems, essays, news texts, song lines and even program code. Although the system is still under construction, it has trained how language works with around 500 billion words.
The language robot developed by the company OpenAI is based on the GPT-3 system, a very comprehensive artificial intelligence (AI) model that has been enriched with almost all Internet sources, such as Wikipedia articles, digitized book collections and many other text sources. With this content, the AI learns to recognize the patterns and structures of language, and if you give the chatbot a word, it can use statistical correlations to predict with a very high probability what the next word should be. The algorithm then starts again from the beginning based on the previous word series and continues to make additions. The result is a complete sentence, or even an entire text, poem or programming code. However, although the machine can recombine the content it has learned, it never creates anything completely new. Nevertheless, that is enough to amaze us.
Research question and sample
For researchers and financial service providers who already use bots or are planning to do so in the near future, the question now is what impact will ChatGPT have on organizations and how will it change customer communication as a whole? At the same time, customers are asking themselves when they will only be able to communicate with a company’s customer service via a bot.
In order to provide answers to the above questions and better understand the impact of the new technology, the Institute of Financial Services Zug (IFZ) interviewed seventeen employees who work with chatbots in financial services companies in the first half of January 2023.
The survey participants are either team or department heads from Swiss financial service providers who already have experience with chatbots or voicebots. 12% of respondents have even been gaining experience with bots since 2016 or earlier. 19% of respondents launched a chat project for the first time in 2017 or 2022 and the rest have been working on the topic since 2019 or 2021.
81% of the companies surveyed have between one and three employees working on the bot project.
The results
The majority (63%) of the employees surveyed had not only heard about ChatGPT and the opportunity to try out the new technology online through the survey, but had already heard about it beforehand through social networks or other media such as television, radio or daily newspapers. Only 6% heard about the progress made by the US company OpenAI from friends or work colleagues.
The topic doesn’t just seem to occupy the news or social networks. In 19% of the companies surveyed, an internal news message was sent to all employees due to ChatGPT and the associated opportunities and risks.
The topic of ChatGPT has triggered new discussions at 72% of the organizations. This often involves ethical issues or questions relating to data protection and copyright. Questions regarding future use cases for chat and voicebots and possible applications of ChatGPT will also be discussed.
As things stand today, it can be assumed that ChatGPT will also have a short and long-term impact on Swiss companies.
19% of respondents say that their team has already received more attention and importance within the company since the ChatGPT reports. Others report that internal issues relating to data protection and ethics have become much more important in recent weeks. However, just under half of the survey participants (44%) admit that they have not yet noticed any changes within the chat and voicebot teams or projects.
In any case, the respondents hope that their chat and voicebot team and their project will attract significantly more attention in the future. 31 percent of the employees surveyed also hope for a significant expansion of the current bot solution.
Although ChatGPT has already triggered a number of topics and discussions in companies to date, half of those surveyed do not expect most of the effects to be felt until Q3 2023. 13% expect a major impact earlier (in Q2 2023) and 13% also expect the impact later (in 2024).
In addition to the desire for more attention and prioritized implementation of chat and voicebot projects, thanks to ChatGPT, respondents also see new dangers in the use of AI technology. Half of the employees are critical of the fact that Swiss companies have no influence on OpenAI’s AI models and could therefore lose control. 38% have concerns about their own data protection guidelines.
It is interesting to note that only 6% consider ChatGPT to be too unspecific and see this as a danger.
These fears are justified, as 44% of the employees surveyed agree with the statement that excessive data protection requirements are a reason for the failure of chat and voicebot projects. 31 % can neither agree nor disagree with this statement. A quarter do not agree with this statement.
Another reason why chat projects often fail is the fact that the company’s own interfaces are too specific or too complicated and therefore do not harmonize with the chosen bot technology. 69% cite this fact as a frequent obstacle, while the remaining 31% neither agree nor disagree with the statement.
According to our survey, ignorance or even fear of chatting with an AI is not a major obstacle for Swiss financial service providers. Now, one might have assumed that ChatGPT would take away customers’ fear or reluctance to deal with artificial intelligence, but according to the companies surveyed, this is no longer so absolutely necessary.
Conclusion
ChatGPT has clearly led to many news reports, including internally within the company. The new technology has also strengthened or even spawned discussions about ethics, copyright and data protection within the company.
Since the release of ChatGPT, many chat and voicebot teams have enjoyed more attention within the company. Most teams are also hoping that the new AI solutions will expand their existing chat systems.
So far, however, we have only seen discussions and wishes. ChatGPT has not yet brought any real changes to the company and, according to the Swiss companies surveyed, this will continue until at least the third quarter of 2023.
However, due to the fact that data protection plays an overriding role for the majority of Swiss organizations and that the data from customer dialogues with ChatGPT flows back into OpenAI’s models, which are located in the USA, it is questionable whether most companies will see the first adjustments to their chat and voicebot systems due to ChatGPT as early as Q3 / 2023. The survey also shows that even without ChatGPT, the company’s own interfaces present major hurdles when implementing bot projects. It is questionable whether companies will be able to overcome these hurdles in combination with ChatGPT.
In conclusion, it can be said that thanks to ChatGPT, many companies are now focusing more on chat technologies and will probably continue to expand them in the future. At this stage, it remains to be seen how easily companies can use OpenAI’s AI models to take their own customer service or consulting to the next level.
And now?
The topic is already on the research agenda at the Institute of Financial Services Zug (IFZ). Initial discussions have already begun with selected financial service providers on how to proceed with the integration of aspects of ChatGPT, for example in pension advice or the strengthening of financial literacy.
If you are also interested in a more in-depth exchange on the possible uses and stumbling blocks of ChatGPT, please feel free to contact me at any time(sophie.hundertmark@hslu.ch).
The article was originally published on the IFZ Retail Banking Blog.
