Generative AI Isn’t Ubiquitous in the Business World—at Least Not Yet


ChatGPT和其他形式的生成式人工智能经历了飞速发展，但许多企业还在犹豫是否要一头冲进去。



ChatGPT和其他形式的生成式AI经历了飞速发展，但许多企业还在犹豫是否要一头冲进去。 6park.com
ChatGPT and other forms of generative artificial intelligence have experienced meteoric growth, but many businesses are hesitant to rush headlong into the technology.  6park.com
  
例如，烟草公司Reynolds American采取“慢慢来”的方式，在有限范围内测试生成式AI。该公司首席信息官Aaron Gwinner说，公司正在试验通过AI来改进对大型数据集的分析，但不是在高风险的财务应用中，也不是在面向客户的地方。 6park.com
Tobacco company Reynolds American, for instance, is taking a go-slow approach, testing gen AI in a limited capacity. It is experimenting with using AI to improve analysis of large data sets, but not in high-risk finance applications or in customer-facing roles, said Chief Information Officer Aaron Gwinner. 6park.com
    
“生成式AI有一些固有的风险，”Gwinner说。“开始做AI项目之前，我们需要打好基础。” 6park.com
“There’s some inherent risks with gen AI,” Gwinner said. “Before we run off and we just start doing AI projects, we need to get the foundations and the basics in place.” 6park.com
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微软的Copilot、谷歌的Gemini和OpenAI的ChatGPT都曾试图将生成式AI引入到商业领域。支持者希望这项技术能带来变革。例如，瑞典金融科技公司Klarna今年2月表示，ChatGPT工具现在可以完成700名客服人员的工作。 6park.com
Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT have sought to bring generative AI to the business world. Boosters hope the technology will be transformative. Swedish financial-technology company Klarna, for example, in February said a ChatGPT tool now does the work of 700 customer service agents. 6park.com
   
但许多公司还在观望。 6park.com
But many companies aren’t leaping in, just yet. 6park.com
   
对企业信心的广泛调查显示，与Reynolds一样，许多企业都在谨慎行事。美国人口普查局(Census Bureau) 3月份发布的数据显示，估计只有5.4%的企业使用某种类型的AI来生产产品或提供服务。普查局的数据显示，信息行业和大型企业相对来说使用AI的情况更多。 6park.com
Broad surveys of business sentiment show many, like Reynolds, are proceeding with caution. U.S. Census Bureau data released in March found only an estimated 5.4% of businesses use AI of any type to produce goods or services. Businesses in the information sector and large businesses use AI more than others, the bureau’s data show. 6park.com
   
研究公司Gartner今年3月发布的一份报告显示，最可能打算采用生成式AI的是生命科学公司、石油和天然气企业以及通信服务提供商，这些行业中有42%-49% 的公司表示有此意向。但许多调查显示，大多数表示要采用AI的公司最终都没有采用，Gartner将这种现象称为“雄心与成果之间的差距”。 6park.com
Companies most likely to say they intend to adopt generative AI are life sciences, oil and gas, and communication-service providers, with 42% to 49% in those industries reporting that intent, according to a report published in March by Gartner, a research company. Most companies that say they are going to adopt AI, though, ultimately don’t do it, many surveys have shown, a phenomenon Gartner calls a “gap between ambition and achievement.” 6park.com
   
研究和宣传组织AI Policy Institute联合创始人Daniel Colson说，各组织仍在努力了解生成式AI究竟有多大用处。 6park.com
Organizations are still trying to see how useful generative AI actually is, said Daniel Colson, the co-founder of the AI Policy Institute, a research and advocacy group. 6park.com
   
“这在相当长一段时间里一直非常不明确。我认为这导致了关于语言模型对商业应用是否有价值的不确定性，”Colson谈及ChatGPT和其他程序背后的相关AI系统时说。 6park.com
“That’s been really unclear for quite a while. And I think that’s led to uncertainty about whether language models are actually that valuable for business applications,” Colson said, referring to the AI systems behind ChatGPT and other programs. 6park.com
   
一些人的顾虑是，也许不值得为生成式AI付出那么高的成本。很多组织目前根本还看不出有什么实用之处。 6park.com
Some have concerns that generative AI isn’t worth the cost. Many organizations simply can’t yet see a use case. 6park.com
   
Luminos Law已经考虑了使用生成式AI，但尚未推进此事，尽管该律所专门为客户提供AI风险管理方面的建议。 6park.com
Law firm Luminos Law has thought about using generative AI but hasn’t moved forward, even though the firm specializes in advising clients on AI risk management. 6park.com
   
“我们讨论了这个问题，但事实上，生成式AI的真正价值在于大规模地为许多人提供知识和见解，”Luminos的联合创始人Andrew Burt说。“我们是小型精品律所，使用生成式AI意义不大。” 6park.com
“We’ve talked about it, but the truth is that the real value of generative AI is to get knowledge and insights, at scale, to a lot of people,” said Andrew Burt, Luminos’s co-founder. “We are small and pretty elite, and it just doesn’t make sense.” 6park.com
    
作为高人气工具ChatGPT的早期采用者，线上心理健康服务平台Koko去年曾引发争议，Koko当时披露，它让ChatGPT编写了一些发送给用户的共情讯息。 6park.com
Online mental-health service Koko drew controversy as an early ChatGPT adopter when it revealed last year it had let the popular tool author some empathetic messages sent to users. 6park.com
    
据Koko首席执行官Rob Morris称，虽然实际发送经过了人工核准，讯息发送出去的速度也比本来要快，但当用户得知这些讯息背后是一个虚拟的知己时，心里还是很不舒服。 6park.com
Though the actual sending was approved by a human agent, and messages went out faster than they would have, users were put off when they learned a simulated confidant was behind the messages, according to Koko Chief Executive Rob Morris. 6park.com
    
“虚拟的共情让人有奇怪、空洞之感，” Morris当时表示。Morris称对ChatGPT的使用获得了一个外部委员会的支持，但他说该公司已停止使用此项技术，直到出现更好的实用案例。 6park.com
“Simulated empathy feels weird, empty,” Morris said at the time. Morris said the use of ChatGPT had been cleared by an external board, but he said the company has stopped using the technology until a better use case emerges. 6park.com
   
Mind Meld PR是一家总部位于温哥华的公关机构，业务涉及向众多记者发送推介稿，该公司表示，对生成式AI进行初步尝试的结果并不尽如人意，整个过程（包括打磨生成式AI输出的内容）耗时与让员工完成整个任务所花费的时间差不多。 6park.com
Mind Meld PR, a Vancouver-based public relations agency whose work involves sending pitches to scores of journalists, said a foray into generative AI didn’t turn out as well as it might have hoped since the whole process, including honing the output, took about as long as having staff perform the entire task.  6park.com
   
Mind Meld首席执行官Jonathon Narvey说，在其他一些情况下，AI会针对研究方面的问题给出确信的答案，后来却又承认其答复的内容并不真实。 6park.com
In other instances, the AI would provide confident answers to research questions but later admit its responses weren’t actually real, Mind Meld Chief Executive Jonathon Narvey said. 6park.com
   
“我们试过了。完全是灾难，” Narvey说。 6park.com
“We tried. Total disaster,” Narvey said. 6park.com
   
所谓幻觉，是指生成式AI给出了一个自信但虚构的答案，这种现象在ChatGPT时代已有大量记录。 6park.com
So-called hallucinations, a phenomenon in which an generative AI gives a confident but made-up answer, have been well-documented in the ChatGPT era.  6park.com
   
今年2月，加拿大航空(Air Canada)被勒令向一位客户退款，因为该航空公司的聊天机器人提供了错误的丧亲政策细节。加航表示，该机器人使用的技术较老，不如当前的AI先进，但这一事件凸显了让软件向客户陈述的风险。加航表示已不再使用聊天机器人提供服务。 6park.com
Air Canada was in February ordered to refund a customer after the airline’s chatbot gave the wrong details about its bereavement policy. Air Canada said the technology behind the bot was older and less sophisticated than current AI, but the episode underscored the risk of letting software make representations to customers. Air Canada has withdrawn chatbots from service, it said. 6park.com
   
虽然大型企业比小型企业更有可能采用生成式AI，但大企业也清楚生成式AI有可能造成安全风险。思科系统(Cisco Systems)最近对隐私和安全专业人士进行了一项调查，92%的受访者表示，他们认为生成式AI与其他技术有本质区别，需要新技术来管理数据和风险。超过四分之一的受访者甚至禁止使用生成式AI。 6park.com
Though large businesses are more likely than smaller ones to have adopted generative AI, they also see its potential to pose security risks. Ninety-two percent of respondents to a recent Cisco Systems’ survey of privacy and security professionals said they believed generative AI was fundamentally different from other technologies and required new techniques to manage data and risks. More than a quarter had gone as far as banning its use. 6park.com
   
时间可能是限制广泛应用的主要因素。搜索引擎和社交媒体这两项互联网时代的开创性技术历经多年时间才得以普及。根据皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)的数据，到2002年，也就是谷歌成立四年后，只有29%的互联网用户日常会使用任何搜索引擎。瑞银集团(UBS)的分析师称，ChatGPT在2022年11月推出两个月后就积累了1亿月活用户，成为当时历史上用户群增长最快的应用。 6park.com
Time might be the main factor limiting widespread adoption. Search engines and social media, two groundbreaking technologies of the internet era, took years to adopt. By 2002, four years after Google incorporated, only 29% of internet users used any search engine on a typical day, according to the Pew Research Center. ChatGPT amassed 100 million monthly users just two months after its launch in November 2022, making it the application with the fastest-growing user base in history at that point, according to analysts at UBS. 6park.com
   
不过，生成式AI最终可能会像早期那些技术一样，得到普遍采用，几乎无处不在。微软表示，其研究发现，在试用过微软生成式AI产品Copilot的用户中，有77%不想放弃它。 6park.com
But generative AI could ultimately follow the same trajectory toward near ubiquitous adoption as those earlier technologies. Microsoft research has found that 77% of users who have tried its generative AI product Copilot don’t want to give it up, the company said.  6park.com
 
 
Gwinner说，Reynolds American正试图在快速发展带来的竞争优势与发展过快的风险之间取得平衡。 6park.com
Reynolds American is trying to balance the competitive gains that can come from moving quickly against the risk of moving too fast, Gwinner said. 6park.com
   
“如果你想想过去100年的技术革命，这将是最大的革命之一，”Gwinner说，“（但）我们需要时间做好准备。” 6park.com
“If you think about the revolutions in the last 100 years in technology, this is going to be one of the biggest,” Gwinner said. “[But] it’s going to take us time to be ready for it.”