ChatGPT took the world by storm in only a few months, and since then, it has spurred an arms race with the titans of tech to see who can get to the market fastest.  

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for a while, but when businesses saw the everyday power of ChatGPT, everyone came to the same conclusion that this is here to stay. AI has several use cases, whether it’s driving strategic business decisions, protecting digital assets, providing better quality, reducing human error, or delivering end-to-end customer service, we’re truly just beginning to scratch the surface of its potential – and that can be scary. 

Leaders must determine the best ways to embrace AI technology and pivot their business models today. Companies that leverage AI have the opportunity for a strong strategic advantage over their competition — however, it’s not without its concerns. 

Starting with the positives, let’s break down the initial impact of AI on businesses. 

• Automating customer service

Automating customer service can be the holy grail on both sides. Human-powered client care can get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of customer service calls, and expanding customer success departments isn’t always the best option. 

By automating customer service using methods like AI chatbots, the workload on the backend gets managed much more efficiently. Product development departments for benefits companies can use data gathered to adapt to the ever-changing market.

This can translate to benefits on the front end as well. Data gathered from a chatbot conversation can help brokers see what a plan sponsor needs. Employee benefits has immense power to provide peace of mind to a client, further enhancement could only give further tranquillity. 

• Educate potential customers

Human beings are creatures of habit in the same universal ways. This is why a lot of companies have FAQ sections on their websites. FAQs serve to save a lot of time that would be otherwise wasted trying to answer the same questions over and over again. 

AI chatbots can have a bank of ready-made answers based on large data sets. The advent of ChatGPT has also made this an exciting time for brokers. Perhaps with sufficient levels of complexity, the AI could dip into its knowledge reserves to provide more catered education for a prospective client to nurture new leads in the background. 

• Managing Claims

Let’s reiterate that customers who feel their needs are being met will have peace of mind. A strong, reliable AI can handle many manual tasks such as referral screening, claim creation, and case assignment. Precious time is lost to productivity-killing activities like vetting and employee management. AI can take this out of the hands of humans and do it at lightning speed. The plan sponsor handles their case quickly and thoroughly, giving them peace of mind.

• Fraud Detection

Fraud has long been a massive problem in the insurance industry. Chatbots can use AI technology to review claims thoroughly, verify policy details and put them through a fraud detection algorithm. 

A well-designed AI can much more easily detect the hallmarks of fraud and flag it for human operators to investigate. The internet has turned information like claims forms into a firehose. Fraudulent cases are definitely swimming among the real ones, and an AI can be a labour-saving device for finding them.

• Generating reports and summaries

“ChatGPT can streamline the process by analyzing a large amount of data (often across multiple systems) and turning it into reports or summaries.” – Forbes

Imagine the time saved and the potential for decision agility and accuracy if writing reports was done for you. The technology would save time that would either be poured into research, writing, and editing time. AI can potentially open up time that would otherwise be wasted on these tasks. It would have reached cyberspace so far that it would find things that a human researcher would miss. Management would only benefit from such a technology. 

The Limitations of ChatGPT in Healthcare and Telemedicine

Much has been written about how AI technologies have the potential to transform healthcare with the ability to analyze large amounts of data and make predictions – but it cannot replace the human side of understanding medical conditions and providing treatment options. Chatbots cannot perceive human non-verbal cues, tone of voice, or other subtleties that a health practitioner can pick up on and decipher. And with a lack of regulatory oversight, it opens the door to the potential for medical bias leading to biased predictions and medical recommendations.

It’s also important to note that using ChatGPT for content creation is essentially a different form of plagiarism due to its primary source of collecting information and ideas that have already been written. But like it or not, AI is here to stay – and it will only be infused in every aspect of our lives. However, it’s moving at a speed that we cannot comprehend its growing risks. An open letter from several leaders in the AI space has called for a collective 6-month pause to pull back and assess the risks this revolutionary technology can pose to humanity. 

Privacy Concerns 

To balance out the argument, it’s important to discuss the growing number of issues that have arisen with ChatGPT in the five months since it’s gone live. The Canadian privacy commissioner has launched an investigation into OpenAI over a complaint alleging personal information collection, use, and disclosure without consent. Many countries have also begun to crack down on the mass adoption of ChatGPT due to ongoing concerns over the deployment of this technology. 

While it’s exciting to discover how AI can improve business speed, it’s not without its growing list of concerns that cannot be overlooked.