[Founder’s Real Talk #24] Worried too much about how GPT-4 will replace you?

As a founder in the knowledge work services space, I’d be lying to you if I’m not losing sleep over anxiety of how AI will disrupt this space.

A lot of jobs will be lost.

No matter what the expert keep saying “of course there will be roles for human to play — whether as a reviewer, quality assurance check, or providing insights and really understanding what the AI models tell you about”, most people still view this with a static point of view, instead a dynamic one:

It took only a few months from the world to evolve from GPT-3 to ChatGPT/GPT-3.5 to GPT 4. We might be looking at another few months to GPT-5 and even more. This technology is going to evolve at an exponential speed beyond any company’s planning cycle — typically quarterly if not annually. So any plan you make, you’ll just need to get back to the drawing board and remake it with a new set of assumptions every time.

But to run a business, besides worrying about the road ahead, you also need to focus on now. So the best cure of over-worrying and over-thinking on the anxiety brought by AI, is to focus on sales.

It keeps you on edge and your minds sharp. You get better ideas of how your go-to-market strategies should evolve, and get a up-to-date temperature check on the market sentiment.

The analogy I have here is the balance of doing and thinking or the balance of mental and physical exercise. It keeps you away of worrying too much on the theoretical threats and keeps your mind grounded on how you can utilize the technology and ride the wave instead of being eaten by the wave.