00:00:00
well artificial intelligence has been around for a while but it seems like 2023 was the year that it took over as
00:00:06
our primary focus when thinking about the future of business and other aspects of Our Lives Christian tursh is a
00:00:14
co-director of the Mac Institute for Innovation management he is also professor of operations information and
00:00:20
decisions here at the Wharton School and he joins us here in studio great to see
00:00:23
you thanks for having me here how do you process all that we have seen and talked
00:00:29
about around AI this year it's been a crazy year so if you think back to the
00:00:34
fall of 2022 when chbt came out it started off as something that we thought of primarily the kids would use to get
00:00:42
their homework done and it took the World by storm at the same time we had Dar mid Journey stable diffusion do
00:00:50
amazing work in in the texture image world and with GPT 4 launch the the large language model has got even better
00:00:58
it's been a hell of a ride I would imagine it's probably not even a surprise to you to see how it has kind
00:01:05
of enveloped the thinking of so many businesses over the last year as well so I think we had a big jump in progress I
00:01:14
think technological progress doesn't typically follow Continuum there these what we call punctuated equilibria these
00:01:21
moments when there are big shifts and I think we have seen this massive shift that go beyond what companies expected
00:01:28
and I lots of companies work with at the mech Institute are now thinking about getting ready for the changes and
00:01:35
retooling so to say now that the new tool is available is this going to be uh a a path that all businesses will be
00:01:43
able to take advantage of I think the expectation is obviously larger companies that have the resources will
00:01:49
easily be able to do this but I guess my question is more about what about the midsize and small businesses and how
00:01:56
they may be impacted by this so that they're not necessarily left out I think
00:02:00
it's actually the opposite I think this change that we have seen is going to
00:02:05
lead to a democratization of AI it used to be that you have to be a big company to have the the big data the the huge
00:02:12
data set that you use to train your AI yourself and I think thanks to the GPT technology basically their training is
00:02:19
it's pre-trained now and so right out of a box uh a one person startup can create
00:02:26
a kind of a cool app uh and provide solution to needs that are currently unmet so I think it helps the small guys
00:02:34
the one thing that we've seen with the updates of uh C GPT and open Ice workers
00:02:40
of course that every time that they come out with a new release thousands of these small Ventures that were about to
00:02:46
take off are wiped away because their functionality is faked into the Next Generation but I I don't think it is
00:02:52
giving the big guys an unfair Advantage it feels almost a little bit like we're
00:02:58
in a process right now where it's like when we get an update for our smartphone
00:03:02
or you know have to update our our uh our our security uh on our computer right now that it's coming at that speed
00:03:09
almost unbelievable right you go from 3.5 to four to Turbo the gets integrated I mean all in one year after again there
00:03:18
been progress in AI for for for many decades but uh the last year it seems to have hit the mainstream both on the
00:03:28
availability of the techn technological solution capabilities but also now I think the awareness of what
00:03:34
it can do in Enterprises where we can use it to create value you and I had talked uh many months ago when you had
00:03:41
done research around uh the impact of AI on uh it trying to pass an NBA test uh how has your thinking around the use of
00:03:54
AI in the education setting developed over that time as well so the first thing I think most of us do now is if we
00:04:01
have an exam that is kind of a traditional exam uh B GP B GPT right I mean it's too good it passes every exam
00:04:10
you can't figure that out or detect that at the end of the day we at the world in
00:04:15
school want to give degrees to students and not to to software having said this uh I have in my operation scores just
00:04:24
kind of created the new first new assignment where I explicitly asked students to use G PPT to help them sort
00:04:31
through massive and complex data uh I have in my Innovation course where we start new Ventures and come up with kind
00:04:37
of ideas on new products and services I urge my students to use CET GPT to generate ideas and even in something as
00:04:46
bin is looking at my teaching evaluations where we get lots of verbal comments I just put this into GPT and
00:04:52
say like summarize this and make three recommendations of what I should improve next year and it's pretty good but so
00:04:59
you don't have a negative viewpoint on it at all it's very much a positive you
00:05:04
know and the benefits he can provide Viewpoint well maybe that is wishful thinking but I mean we don't have a
00:05:10
choice right but I think look if all we did is we would go back to a world where we did not have this
00:05:19
technology uh it would be a waste right this is a huge opportunity for many professions Education Health Care uh and
00:05:27
many others of really dealing with the big problems I mean a lot of jobs uh folks are burning out folks
00:05:37
are working I mean we had we had a meeting with American Institute our board last night folks from pen medicine
00:05:42
were there uh the burnout rate of providers of people working in medicine is huge we need to help these people and
00:05:50
so if you if you give me a a magic want that makes me a 50% productivity Improvement I take the
00:05:57
want so you just talked about about impact uh one of the areas of impact that has been brought up is is AI going
00:06:08
to eventually take jobs away but there's also been a focus on how AI can support
00:06:14
the efforts of a lot of people uh in the workplace absolutely right which way do
00:06:19
you think it's going to go no I think both right I mean so there will be jobs
00:06:24
that will change I mean basically any job to be done there is a customer who needs something
00:06:29
there is a provider that provides a solution and they have to do this in a way that value is created so that means
00:06:36
the customer is willing to pay more than it costs to generate solution so now first order effect is you have ai
00:06:42
generates a solution which is much cheaper than the human generated solution and so lots of people will have
00:06:48
to change their jobs but second order there are lots of things that right now make no economic sense of doing unmet
00:06:55
customer needs that we with AI can fulfill which which means there're new jobs and which way that goes I don't
00:07:02
think anybody knows I I know you've also taken a look at at AI in the scope of
00:07:08
entrepreneurism as well how does that impact being an entrepreneur moving forward so I think one of the great uses
00:07:17
of AI is as a form of a brainstorming partner we we still see hallucinations in AI we don't think we don't have the
00:07:27
the trust in the technology yet where we would say like drive my car or uh manage
00:07:34
my retirement Port portfolio the nice thing was entrepreneurship in idea generation is you're giving me a 100
00:07:40
ideas even if 99 of those 100 ideas are horrible as long as there's one good one
00:07:45
in the middle I I take that portfolio and so I think that startup aspect of generating ideas for dissertations for
00:07:54
cancer research for entrepreneurship that part of creativity we can can enhance now and that's that
00:08:02
to me is a no-brainer I take that any time you bring up something interesting as well because uh there are still calls
00:08:09
to maybe slow down the Implement implementation of AI so that we truly understand what the impact is where do
00:08:17
you fall on that on that question I mean it's uh probably In Our Lifetime the biggest game changer that
00:08:24
we've seen in history I think you and I have been around for the internet becoming a big thing right then mobile
00:08:30
came I think this is probably the biggest thing in our lifetime uh so it's really hard to predict right I mean you
00:08:37
see people making the argument for super intelligence and that the robots will rule the world smart people argue so uh
00:08:46
I think there are lots of things we regulate in our society that is a good thing uh you're you're not not allowed
00:08:52
to build a nuclear bump in your backyard and again that's a good thing so it
00:08:57
would be shocking if we would leave this space is totally unregulated I think what is especially concerning here is
00:09:04
that if you're building an atomic bomb it took the Manhattan Project over 100,000 people to build an atomic bomb
00:09:10
right I mean that's something that you and I even with evil intent couldn't do
00:09:14
in our backyard uh you jailbreak a a smart AI system it could do horrible thing it
00:09:22
would only take one offender and so I think some form of security some form of Regulation absolutely is your
00:09:28
expectation then that the next couple of years we'll see even greater impact from
00:09:34
from things like chat GPT moving forward I mean the first order of forecasting is extrapolation right I
00:09:41
mean you basically extrapolate the line and uh that's suggest that we're going
00:09:46
to see ma massive progress It's not going to stop tomorrow right so we're
00:09:49
going to see massive progress how long this famous discussion of AGI super intelligence how far we are away uh
00:09:56
nobody knows C certainly I don't know but I think that is more Phil more of a
00:10:01
philosophical but it it still feels like from all that's happened and and with
00:10:07
the potential impact of this technology now you know in our Labs that it feels like it's still a little bit of the tip
00:10:14
of the iceberg doesn't it yes and I think again it will not stop if you even for just another one or
00:10:23
two years you apply some form of extrapolation of the trend that we've seen over the last years uh we're going
00:10:29
to have jaky rolling level writing come out of CH GPT we could imagine the context window has just grown
00:10:38
substantially we could imagine much better science papers and dissertations be generated by CH GPT I don't think it
00:10:47
takes much of a crazy assumption to imagine a world in four or five years where a lot of these things become
00:10:56
true from a business perspective then one of the things I wondered is does this drive even a greater focus on what
00:11:05
productivity will be in the future with employees and getting projects done because you will have this component as
00:11:12
an assistant to be able to get a lot of this work uh done in a quicker fashion but also potentially in a in a more
00:11:20
concise fashion as well I'm a big fan of productivity it sounds totally boring
00:11:26
German operations management type of boring uh but again think about professions such as healthc care think
00:11:33
about Educators we need to make them more productive to improve their quality of
00:11:39
life and have healthier patients and smarter children right I think those productivities uh it's up for us as a
00:11:47
society what we do with these productivity gains and I very much hope that we use them for better education
00:11:54
and better treatments as opposed to for lower cost of healthare and so you mentioned earlier about the
00:12:01
element of stress that a lot of companies are dealing with in healthcare as well are there other avenues that
00:12:08
that the hospital industry is watching closely where they think that AI will be able to to provide a benefit moving
00:12:15
forward I think in the news the stories that that reported is the capabilities of AI to help with the
00:12:24
diagnosis right it it can read uh in image to text it can read x-rays it can uh I'm working on a project on Mental
00:12:34
Health right now where it can do pretty decent diagnostic assessments uh I think we forget how
00:12:40
much of the of of the life in a a day of the life in the worker in healthcare nurse or provider how much that is
00:12:49
writing notes reports keeping track of medical records I think a lot of that can be freed up and I think that's a
00:12:56
much low hanging frood it's less glorious it's l sexy to talk about yeah
00:13:00
but I think that's where the first line of attack is going to be but I would
00:13:03
imagine that it's partially benefiting in in an area like healthcare from the
00:13:08
fact that the healthcare industry has already kind of made a transition to technology to begin with and so this is
00:13:13
the next step in the process absolutely I I come from Germany my parents live in
00:13:18
Germany that care in Germany unbelievable how this system is still paper based and years behind we have had
00:13:27
lots of people joke complain about the transition to the electronic health record it's been uh the right thing and
00:13:34
I think we're going to see massive rewards from that what are you most interested to watch or potentially see
00:13:41
occur next year in and around this area I think next year I want to see how we speaking for myself how we go from
00:13:51
cool projects of guess what it can do that towards really uh implementing uh at the bedside or at the
00:14:01
school bench implementing systems that lead to better outcome I think we we urgently needed and this is going to be
00:14:08
that next phase of learning for so many of the younger Generations is how AI can
00:14:14
complement a lot of what we do as we you know as we are growing up and going out
00:14:18
into the world yeah and I mean many years ago you and I had discussions about moves right massive open online
00:14:24
sources I mean we were 10 years younger forgot about that yes and so there we were saying how the moves will disrupt
00:14:31
everything but what we couldn't do with a video Based Teaching is it personalized tutoring and that I think
00:14:38
is a major strength that we have the technology now every kid can be picked up where he or she stands and be coached
00:14:47
and again I'm in no way implying that we don't you need human workers teachers to
00:14:52
do this right but we can customize the education to an extent that we could not do this before and I think I very much
00:14:59
hope that this overcomes a lot of the quality discrepancies around schooling the oecd just this week released a pizza
00:15:06
reports with horrible report cards on math and science for many of the developed Nations kids have not
00:15:13
recovered from covid in the classroom the the test results are horrible and so again we need that technology we need
00:15:20
that productivity boost and shouldn't be scared of it only by putting it into
00:15:26
this kind of it's going to steal our jobs Christian great to talk with you thanks very much always a pleasure thank
00:15:31
you Christian tursh who is uh co-director of the Mac Institute for Innovation management and also professor
00:15:37
of operations information and decisions here at the Wharton School