Upon first glance, you might think that ChatGPT is making us less clever and lazy. It answers questions we might have previously debated in detail. It brings forward solutions we once racked our brains to find. It conjures up content we might once have taken hours to write.
While that’s definitely one interpretation, another is the opposite: ChatGPT has the potential to make us smarter. The instant availability and fast responses, coupled with its vast knowledge and access to more information means a different way of thinking and a new way of working. ChatGPT might be rewiring our brains to a new, smarter channel, that we hadn’t previously had to use.
Here’s how ChatGPT could be making you smarter
1. Removing excuses for inaction
Because you can open up ChatGPT and get answers in an instant, there is now no excuse for not taking action. There’s no passively waiting for emails to arrive, going stale waiting to book a meeting, or losing momentum waiting for someone to make their mind up. You don’t have to wait for answers or wait for someone else to create the copy. Blockers that once existed now don’t. You can move forward with ideas far better than before.
If you’re not producing content or getting ideas on how you could solve your problems, that’s on you. Within a few clicks you can train ChatGPT to write in your style, prompt it to suggest answers to your biggest business challenge or ask it to be your personal AI business coach. For some, these excuses being removed will be a breath of fresh air. You are now empowered to produce.
2. Shortening feedback loops
With ChatGPT, the quality of output reflects the quality of input. Rubbish in, rubbish out. Because your prompt generates an instant response, the feedback loop is fast. With a few tweaks, your prompting could result in a wildly different outcome, and now you know how to generate a similar quality response in the future. Iteration can happen much faster, progress can be made on a new scale. Your brain will work faster to keep up with the tech.
Being forced to reassess inputs straight after their creation unlocks a part of your brain you might not normally use. Critical thinking is required, as is analysis. Faced with the cold, hard facts of your prompting prowess, you will be motivated to learn how to prompt ChatGPT effectively, to get a better outcome for your business.
3. Improving evaluation skills
Whatever you ask of ChatGPT, you will receive an answer. Maybe it will be right, maybe it will be wrong; the evaluation of the information is up to you. By engaging ChatGPT in a conversation, you can mind map and refine your ideas. You can tell it to come up with something better. This constant back and forth of evaluation and regeneration might be a new skill.
ChatGPT is a tool, not a person. You know you can’t take what it says at face value, so your mind will work overtime to assess and iterate. Suggestions, insights and best practices should be met with scrutiny, refining your strategic thinking ability and enabling you to make more informed decisions for your venture. ChatGPT is happy to be interrogated or proven wrong, so the smart entrepreneur spars with the large language model to improve results.
4. Better at giving instructions
Prompt ChatGPT compassionately, just like you’d instruct a team member with a clear task. Give follow up information with just as much empathy. If a colleague came to you with subpar work, you wouldn’t get angry or annoyed. You wouldn’t simply say, “do it again” without telling them how, because it might not be any better the second time around.
If your ChatGPT output isn’t what you expected, it’s because your prompt wasn’t clear. Learning how to explain your requirements, clearly, calmly, and with the relevant context, will carry over to how you instruct your team. In both scenarios, think creatively and critically when formulating your prompts, thereby improving your instruction-giving and problem-solving abilities and getting better results with the same energy.
5. Inspiring new thinking
In order to be qualified to drive passengers around, London black cab drivers have to remember over 25,000 streets in London, plus countless tourist landmarks, and know how to get there. The revision and test that follows develops a bigger hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with learning and memory. Learning how to prompt effectively, and remembering what works, could be having a similar effect on you. As you think strategically to achieve better outcomes, your neurons are firing and wiring together in different ways.
While you can get smarter by asking ChatGPT to teach you new things; posing questions, seeking guidance, and exploring new areas of knowledge from its wide range of training data; even just learning how to prompt might be sufficient to inspire new thinking. With your new and improved brain comes new perspectives, new ways of solving problems, new ideas to test in your business. A smarter business brain with fresh eyes and motivation to improve.
6. More compassionate and patient
Entrepreneurs can be hot-headed. For some, it’s a strength. Many are impulsive, fast-paced and ready to take action. They can think up an idea and run with it. They can spot problems and get going on the solution. The flipside of this strength is impatience, irrationality and an inability to empathize or cut slow movers any slack.
There’s no benefit to these weaknesses when engaging with ChatGPT. No matter how impatient you are, it’s not going to go any faster or guess what you want. If you say stupid things you’ll get stupid responses. If you get angry, you’ll only annoy yourself. There is no point yelling or getting emotional. There is no other way but to calmly explain what you’re looking for in a more effective way. Practice becoming a calm and composed founder with ChatGPT and you’ll deal with team members and suppliers in a far better way.
Could using ChatGPT make you a smarter entrepreneur?
The behaviour learned in engaging with ChatGPT can make you a smarter entrepreneur. Benefits come from its instant nature, which shortens feedback loops and forces a better prompting technique, as well as its rational way of dealing with inputs.
If large language models make us smarter, the possibilities are huge. We can achieve more with less time, or ramp up output with the same effort or time. Energy can go further with artificially intelligent firepower, leading to bigger and better businesses run by happier owners.
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