ChatGPT — The Google Killer? The Job Taker? Or Just a Fancy Chatbot?

ChatGPT took the internet by storm.

A whopping 1 million users in five days of release.

The OpenAI Team quickly realized that there needed to be checks and balances in place.

Because people were asking the AI tool methods on how to build Molotov cocktails.

Someone asked the tool to write SQL injections, and well, one particular soul asked the tool to list down banking sites around the world with vulnerabilities and how to exploit them !!

So, it’s no wonder that last week, Sundar Pichai, one of the most influential people in tech, issued a “Code Red” to Google, asking several of its team members to re-focus their efforts on its AI Capabilities.

Several tech evangelists have already claimed that Google’s days are numbered. At the forefront of these predictions is Paul Buchheit, creator of Gmail, whose tweet went viral.

Here is that tweet:

           So, are we seeing the beginning of the end here? Like Armageddon for Google?

Is ChatGPT really as awesome as they claim, and, more importantly, will it make you and me knowledge workers who wake up and sleep with Google (no pun intended)?

We took the AI platform out for a spin, asking it a variety of questions and putting it through the paces. The results have been impressive, to say the least. 

But if we say that tomorrow you can expect that this AI tool has taken up your position in your organization and you no longer can sit in your cubicle looking at Cat Gifs all day, we will be pushing it a bit.

First Things First: ChatGPT Is Not a Search Engine, and So, Not a Google Killer, at Least Not Now

We are so used to searching for information online that the small white line on the Google Search bar is practically part of our lives now.

Want to know about the best Mexican restaurants in the Bay Area? Google it.

What’s the weather like today in Tokyo? Just type it into Google, dummy.

Price of Apple Stocks? Best binge-worthy shows on Netflix? Espionage fiction list 2022? The list of things people search for on Google goes on and on and on.

In fact, according to this report, there were approximately 8.5 billion Google Searches per day, and the website is visited a whopping 87.3 billion times.

Now, this is some serious competition that ChatGPT is against. So, does it live up to the hype?

Well, we typed in “The best Mexican restaurants in the Bay Area,” and this is what the AI returned.

But the responses are limited to five numbers, and this is the creme de la creme of the list. There may be tens, even hundreds of Mexican restaurants in the Bay Area that the AI just can’t list down, as Google would.

Google has a huge share of the Search market already, thanks to its Page Ranking Search system that quickly threw Yahoo to the second position in the search list. That is kind of what Google does. It takes an innovation that already exists and then makes it better.

Remember, Google never came up with the Search. It was Yahoo. But Google’s “Always in Beta” method of iterating with a product and shorter development cycles means Alphabet Inc. always stayed one step ahead in the game.

So you can’t use ChatGPT like a Search engine since it only has data collected until 2021. ChatGPT doesn’t know that Argentina beat France in the FIFA world cup, nor can it give you the review of Glass Onion, a Knives Out mystery.

But Wait…

Just because it isn’t connected to the internet yet, doesn’t mean that ChatGPT isn’t good at giving you answers. In fact, in some cases, we found that ChatGPT was much better at doing things than “Googling” for it.

For instance, I wanted to plan a five-day vacation in Switzerland and asked both Google and ChatGPT the same question.

Here are the results from Google:

I asked ChatGPT the exact same question, and the results made us stand up and notice:

ChatGPT actually created a detailed five-day itinerary for me in Switzerland, leaving me less confused as to what to do and getting to actually plan the trip.

And all this happened in less than 10 seconds.

As you can see, ChatGPT is less biased, and since it hasn’t been monetized yet, there aren’t those annoying ads that pop up as soon as you type a query.

So the gauntlet has been thrown. ChatGPT will fight Google in the coming years, and if Sundar Pichai is worried, then we are in for some exciting times ahead.

Wait a Minute...You Said Chatgpt Is Going To Take My Job Away!!

Ahh, now things get interesting, don’t they? I am a coder, a blogger, a Marketer, an SEO specialist, a teacher, or any one of the fancy job titles we have for “Knowledge Workers.”

Will ChatGPT make me obsolete?

Will my company realize that AI can do my job better than me at practically no cost?

Is it time to go to rural Ecuador and start banana farming because AI cannot possibly take my job away?

Well, we will attempt to answer some of these questions, but not to leave you waiting; here is the simple answer.

No.

When we saw robots, and then computers arrive, there were doomsday conspiracies that the average human worker would become obsolete.

But did that happen? No.

We just evolved with technology, which, most likely, is the case with ChatGPT too.

ChatGPT will just make the average worker more efficient and, in some cases, make them work harder.

Here are three broad categories of employment types that will be affected:

Blogging / Copywriting: ChatGPT will not completely replace bloggers. But if you were used to an easy life where all you had to do was scrape the first few websites on a Google search, this is a warning for you.  ChatGPT is extremely good at writing medium and long-form content, and this has increasingly become a headache for those who review written work on a day-to-day basis. Take blogging, for instance. We asked ChatGPT to generate a blog post on the “future of chatbots,” and out came a beautiful 300-word piece that looked like this...
While Google has been severely penalizing AI-generated content, it will become increasingly difficult if tools like ChatGPT continue to evolve and Google's algorithms just can’t differentiate between AI-generated content that has been slightly modified and an original piece.

Don’t worry, though. If you are a blogger with a specialty niche and enjoy writing pieces after conducting thorough research, you are safe. ChatGPT is not yet good at writing thought leadership posts after interviews with leaders, yet. But it can help you overcome the initial hiccups of writing a blog introduction.

Make a living writing short social media posts? Well, you may be in for a nasty surprise here because ChatGPT is really good at writing them in different tones.

Look at this New Year's Greeting that ChatGPT wrote, also in the tone of Santa!!

As you can see, the entry-level work for a copywriter/blogger can easily be done by this AI tool, and you will really have to pull up your sleeves if you want to stay relevant or even be employed in some cases.

1. Programming

Okay, we know the irony! A tool created using advanced programming techniques, replacing the very programmers who created it. What have you done, Open AI?

As chatbot builders ourselves, we keep telling you that you can build a chatbot without writing a single line of code.

So, is Pandora's box open already when it comes to the death of programming jobs?

Again, the answer is a partial no. If you are a Full Stack developer who has 10 years of experience building things from scratch, a fancy AI tool may not be able to replace you. At least, not yet.

However, it is still unclear as to the extent to which ChatGPT is actually going to affect the programming world.

We put the bot through its paces, asking it to create a simple website for our Hamburger business. And what did ChatGPT do?

It went ahead and wrote the actual code.

This was our query. “Create a simple, one-page website in Javascript for my hamburger business.”

Here is a code snippet from what ChatGPT actually returned.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg as to what ChatGPT can actually do.

There is even a Youtube video on how you can build your own web browser in under five minutes using Python code generated in ChatGPT.

So entry-level programmers, beware!! ChatGPT will surely give you a run for your money. 

2. Customer Support

This is another category of employees that are facing an existential threat. The customer support industry has been disrupted by tech, and chatbots like Kommunicate already help companies of all sizes automate their customer support.

ChatGPT is going to take this disruption to the next level.

For instance, imagine you were selling cars, and the customer just faced an issue with a Ford Ecosport car that you just sold.

We asked ChatGPT to write a customer service email apologizing for the faulty car and assuring them that help is on the way.

This is the response we got:

The AI Tool even has empathy built in, which shows just how advanced the technology is in mimicking an actual human writing that email.

Imagine the possibilities of this tool for customer support if it had greater knowledge about your product and common issues that arise.

Customer support reps, you better start upskilling yourselves, or this AI tool will soon render you out of a job.

Parting Warning

As you can see, ChatGPT won’t replace Google (yet), and ChatGPT won’t take away your job (yet), but the technology is rapidly advancing. Even as I am typing this out, ChatGPT will make a few jobs redundant, that’s for sure. Also, in the future, programming jobs will not be as lucrative since the tool can write the basic code and even debug it.

So as a knowledge worker, all you can do is upskill yourself. Leaving you with what Jordan Peterson had to say about ChatGPT and AI.

“The AI that has come is smarter than you, and it’s going to be a hell of a lot smarter than you in two years. So hang on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen. Giants are going to walk the earth once more, and we’re going to live through that. 

Maybe."