At the beginning of this month, Microsoft announced the launch of the latest version of AI search engine and browser supported by ChatGPT. “Search engine ushered in a new era”. ChatGPT, a chat robot program released at the end of November last year, has set off a revolutionary wave in the industry. According to the data, ChatGPT has achieved more than 100 million global users in only two months, compared with 75 years of telephone use and 16 years of mobile phone use.

In fact, it is not only the search engine that may usher in a new era, but the entire Internet industry. This is because ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool driven by artificial intelligence technology. It can conduct dialogue through learning and understanding human language, and even complete tasks such as writing emails, video scripts, copywriting, translation, code, and writing papers.

In other words, it is no longer like the machine customer service in the past, but can achieve almost the same chat and communication with real human beings. Scenarios that only appeared in science fiction films in the past are becoming reality. Once promoted, they will be applied to all aspects of economic scenarios.

Because of this, investors’ enthusiasm for AI is rising. According to the data of Tianyancha, there are more than 2.531 million AI related enterprises in China, of which 735,000 were newly registered last year alone. This shows the rapid growth and high increment. In the field of language processing, “machine replacement” has always existed. A large number of algorithms have replaced the items that used to be handled by human communication. The more optimized ChatGPT is accelerating this process and it is a breakthrough from quantitative change to qualitative change.

However, as a program, if it is applied to other industries, it still needs a lot of data and various debugging, as well as continuous adaptation to the existing operating modes of economy and society. It is still too early to rush to determine what industry’s human service ChatGPT will replace in the short term. If the existing operation mode of the economy and society, as well as the technical level and consumption psychology of users, are not fully adapted to AI, enterprises will blindly replace artificial services with artificial services and it will be too hasty. But it is undeniable that the general trend of “machine replacement” in the field of language processing will not be reversed. It is only a matter of time and scope.

In the face of the emergence of chat robots, what business operators really need to do is to understand the connotation and significance of AI transformation. Chat robots are only one kind of AI, and it is not one kind of robot or one kind of program, but the AI that will bring disruptive changes to all industries. The industrial transformation generated by AI has taken place. In the past, it was mainly concentrated in the backstage field. Chat-type robots only pushed it to a more visible and wider range of users.

With regard to the changes in the external technological environment, enterprises should not resist, but gradually adapt. More importantly, they should make preparations to take the lead in their own industry and AI adaptation. Regardless of the technology itself, product structure and operation mode, sometimes a small step ahead, maybe a big step in the future.