A Wharton professor gave AI tools 30 minutes to work on a business project. The results were ‘superhuman’

ChatGPT and similar tools can do a lot in 30 minutes, and plugins like OpenAI, which was announced this week, make AI even more useful. Getty

Artificial intelligence is offering new possibilities in how work can be done, and has left many viewers wondering what white-collar jobs might become.

Ethan Mollick, a professor of management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, has been closely following developments in generative AI tools, which generate text, images, sounds, code and more based on user text queries.

Recently he decided to see how much such devices can perform in 30 minutes, and He explained the results. Something important on the blog this weekend. The results, he wrote, were “superhuman.”

In that short time, he wrote, the tools enabled him to conduct market research, create a positioning document, write an email campaign, create a website, create a logo and “hero shot” graphic, and create a social media campaign for multiple platforms. , and create a script and video.

The project involved the startup marketing a new educational game and wanted AI tools to do all the work, but he only gave directions. To measure the quality of his work, he chose a play he had written himself. The game, Wharton Interactive’s Saturn Parable, is designed to teach leadership and team skills for a virtual mission to Saturn.

First, Mollick rolled out a version of Bing powered by GPT-4. Of course, Bing is Microsoft’s search engine—a long way behind Google—and GPT-4 is the successor to ChatGPT, an AI chatbot from OpenAI that was released in late November. Microsoft has invested billions in OpenAI.

Mollick instructed Bing to educate himself about the game and the commercial simulation market he was a part of. He then instructed him to “pretend to be a marketing genius” and create a document describing an “email marketing campaign and a website to promote the game.”

Generated four emails totaling 1,757 words in less than 3 minutes.

Next, Bing asked the website to define text and graphics, and used GPT-4 to build the site.

The “hero image” (the large image you first encounter when visiting a website) asked MidJourney, an AI tool that generates images from text queries.

He then asked Bing to launch his social media campaign and created posts for five platforms, including Facebook and Twitter.

He then asked Bing to write a video script for Eleven Labs to create an authentic sound and another D-Ed to convert it into a video.

At that time Molik ran out of time. But, he noted that if he had plugins called Open AI. announced this weekHis AI chatbot connected to email automation software could run the email campaign for him.

According to OpenAI, plugins for Slack, Expedia and Instacart are among the first to be created, with more to come. The problem with AI chatbots, The company notes“The only information they learn is their training information.” Plugins can be their “eyes and ears”, allowing them to get more recent or specific information.

Mollik wrote that it would take a team and “perhaps days of work” to do all the work the AI ​​tools did in 30 minutes.

As Bill Gates blogged this week, ChatGPT and similar tools are “increasingly like having a white-collar worker to help you with various tasks.

Real white-collar workers can be forgiven for feeling some stress.