There’s a huge disconnect in the way individuals and large businesses use and view artificial intelligence. According to a recent

Pew Research Survey of people who live in the U.S. who have heard of ChatGPT, only 18% have used it, and of those, one in five have used it but only for entertainment. That means if you write blog or social media posts or website content or anything that gets published online for work, as a freelancer, or for your small business, it’s very likely you’re not using an AI tool like ChatGPT to assist you with writing content or to increase your daily productivity.
On the other hand, big businesses are going all in with AI and are seeking ways to use it to create content, accelerate growth and make their day-to-day operations run smoother.

• A growing number of news organizations, including Buzzfeed and Sports Illustrated, are turning to AI to write content, and small newsrooms are using it to expand their coverage and extend their resources.
• Marketers are using AI to analyze data and generate and personalize content.
• Large companies like Meta, Amazon, Google and Microsoft are in a heated race to integrate AI into their existing products and build new ones.

To take it a step further, Bill Gates and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have both written extensively about their view that AI will transform society as we know it. In his essay,

The Age of AI Has Begun, Gates expresses his belief that AI can improve education, climate change and increase human productivity, among a great many other things. Altman goes as far as laying out a plan for a reorganized society where AI will generate enough wealth for everyone due to what he believes is the coming AI revolution in his post Moore’s Law for Everything.

So, why are individuals and businesses so far apart when it comes to embracing and understanding the enormity of the impact artificial intelligence is already having on the ways we work, write and do business?
Trust.

According to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, nearly half of U.S. adults say they are equally concerned and excited about AI, their biggest concerns being privacy, job loss and misuse. Add to that the fact that large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are trained using vast amounts of content from the Internet and can sometimes include whole chunks of that content in their output, and you have a recipe for copyright infringement, and as a user, it’s very easy to be concerned that you’re stealing someone else’s work without knowing it.

It’s true—artificial intelligence has the potential to generate untold wealth for businesses that tap into it. Still, its use comes with an assortment of moral and ethical problems for which we have no real solutions. The answer isn’t abandoning AI or forbidding its use. It’s having what I call a balanced view of AI tools like ChatGPT and artificial intelligence as a whole.

A Balanced View of AI Defined

A balanced point of view is a realistic way of looking at AI. It’s a perspective that allows you to see the good and bad aspects of artificial intelligence, process them accordingly, and determine how you will use AI for work, content creation, and in your small business based upon facts and facts alone.

Benefits of Having a Balanced View of AI

A balanced view allows us to use artificial intelligence responsibly because it requires us to be aware of how it’s being used to reshape our society and learn how to use it for work, content creation and to assist us as we build businesses so we can keep pace with that change. It also allows us to keep our eyes open to the threats and challenges this technology poses to us all.
Here are some things you can do to shift your perspective and build a balanced approach to artificial intelligence:

• Read books about AI.
• Subscribe to AI newsletters.
• Read research papers about ChatGPT and AI.
• Learn how to use AI tools for work, content creation and productivity.
• Join Discord servers dedicated to AI and participate in the discussions.
• Listen to science and technology and other podcasts that talk about artificial intelligence.
• Read the terms and conditions for every AI tool you use to better understand how your information is being used.
• Seek out news about artificial intelligence from credible sources. Be sure to include international news sources and to read content that shares different points of view.

Artificial intelligence and AI tools like ChatGPT are here to stay, so it’s essential that we as individuals learn how they work and make as much use of them to build our brands and businesses and for the work that we do, just like the large corporations. If we build a balanced view of artificial intelligence and AI tools like ChatGPT, we can acknowledge the risks and protect ourselves as needed while positioning ourselves for success.

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