ChatGPT, a large language model (LLM) developed by OpenAI, has emerged as a viable tool for improving the speed and cost of information-related work. It can help automate services, products, and processes by performing human-level information querying and synthesis instantaneously. This technology is rapidly being adopted by organisations in various sectors, including humanitarian and development organisations. However, the adoption of ChatGPT is not without risks. It is important to think about the opportunities and risks of using ChatGPT in the operations of large organisations in the humanitarian and development sector.

Some opportunities

Crisis management and communication: ChatGPT can be used to monitor and respond to global emergencies in real-time, providing a centralised communication channel for updates, guidelines, and strategies, while also addressing queries from both internal and external stakeholders.
But how?
AI assistants like Jarvis inside Whatsapp and Telegram make it possible to consult quickly on the go. It’s also possible to generate content, such as videos, faster than ever, just with text inputs.
Training and capacity building: ChatGPT can serve as an interactive learning platform, providing tailored training materials, simulations, and assessments to help build capacity within the organisation and improve the knowledge and skills of professionals.
But how?
Education platforms like Duolingo and Khan Academy now have AI-powered tutors for learners, and assistants for teachers.
Internal knowledge management: ChatGPT can be used to query an organisation's knowledge resources, allowing staff to quickly access information and expertise, and facilitating knowledge sharing across departments and regions.
But how?
Organisations train GPT-4 on their knowledge base, to have their own AI-powered workplace search (with AskNotion, Glean, or UseFini).
Your knowledge base can become an asset, like Bloomberg are doing by training their own GPT on their financial data.
Documentation is being automatically created (e.g. for a codebase), and data entry and data cleaning can be increasingly automated with workflow tools like Bardeen.
Emergency surveillance: ChatGPT can monitor global crises as an early warning system, combining information from various sources (social media, news, and health reports) to provide a comprehensive and real-time picture of global threats, enabling swift response and containment.
But how?
It’s becoming easier and more effective than ever to scan large data streams, using models like HuggingGPT to create your own pipeline for data analytics.
Public health campaigns: ChatGPT can assist in designing and implementing highly personalised effective public health campaigns by analysing target audience demographics, behaviour, and preferences, and creating customised content to maximise engagement and impact.
But how?
The founder of the world’s leading marketing platform, Hubspot, has pivoted to focusing on Chatspot, where AI helps create personalised content and marketing campaigns at scale.
Policy research: ChatGPT can aid in policy research by synthesising relevant papers, data, and best practices, allowing organisations to make informed decisions and create evidence-based health policies and guidelines.
But how?
ChatGPT is excelling at summarising academic articles, blogs and podcasts.
Further still, it can elevate the capabilities of staff - no barrier to knowing data visualization languages or SQL queries by just using text commands.
Grant management: ChatGPT can streamline the grant application, review, and reporting processes, ensuring that funding is allocated efficiently and transparently, and reducing the administrative burden on staff. It could also be used to raise the quality and level the playing field for applicants. Inevitably, it will be used by applicants and funded projects for reporting.
But how?
AI-powered writing tools are speeding up the process, increasing formal writing quality and helping generate ideas (Lex, WriteSonic).
Stakeholder engagement: ChatGPT can facilitate engagement with key stakeholders, such as governments, NGOs, and the private sector, by providing timely and accurate information, and enabling efficient collaboration and coordination.
But how?
Effort is saved on internal communications by automatic meeting summaries, which could extend further into any type of updates.
AI assistants are emerging as a way to make advice more engaging and accessible for external service users, such as this AI-powered agriculture advice for farmers.
Multilingual communication: ChatGPT can be used to automatically translate communications, guidelines, and documents into multiple languages at zero cost and time, ensuring that vital information is accessible to a global audience and enhancing the organisation's ability to collaborate effectively across diverse regions.
But how?
Whisper AI has dramatically increased the quality of speech recognition of audio-to-text.
Tech giants Meta, Amazon and Mozilla have all made translation advances, including under-represented languages, which are becoming productized.
Virtual Assistants: ChatGPT can reduce staff workload, by summarising meeting notes, triaging emails, and creating intelligent alerts that connect new information with the current priorities of staff.
But how?
Enabling tools like LangChain are making it possible to string multiple actions together, and AutoGPT is making it possible for Chatgpt to prompt itself to come up with and execute a plan of action. These are resulting in first assistants like Milo, an assistant for busy parents.

What are the risks?

With any technology, there are risks that need to be assessed and with ChatGPT, those risks could be more than most. The Outsight Team can help you navigate these in the way that ensures it’s possible to improve efficiency without taking unacceptable risks. Some of the common risks associated with the use of ChatGPT are as follows:

Organisational Misinformation: The potential for ChatGPT to provide inaccurate information is a risk that organisations need to consider. It is important to ensure that the data fed into ChatGPT is accurate and reliable, and that the model is regularly updated and retrained to reflect changes in the data.
Inherent Bias: ChatGPT may inadvertently reinforce existing biases in the data it is trained on. It is important to ensure that the data fed into the model is diverse and representative.
Privacy Risks: ChatGPT has access to sensitive information and needs to be trained with data that respects the privacy of individuals. It is important to establish clear policies and procedures to protect the privacy of individuals.
Legal Risks: The use of ChatGPT needs to comply with the relevant laws and regulations, including data protection laws.
Reputational Risks: If ChatGPT is used to produce content or communicate with stakeholders, there is a risk that the communication may not reflect the values and tone of the organization, potentially leading to reputational damage.

How Outsight can help

To ensure safe and effective adoption, we must map the optimal use cases for the organisational level, and empower bottom-up understanding and best practices at the individual level. Outsight can support and accompany organisations on their journey to leverage this game-changing technology, and has developed a stepwise program, including:

Mapping use cases relevant to the organisation's operations.
Evaluating the limitations and risks associated with the identified use cases, along with a generalised framework.
Prioritising innovation opportunities based on short, medium, and long-term impact.
Developing education and capacity building content, workshops and trainings to have a repeatable and scalable impact on the safe adoption of ChatGPT from an end-user perspective..
Supporting the implementation of capacity building programs to take advantage of cost and time savings effectively.

The ultimate goal is to support organisations to take up the dramatic time and cost-saving opportunities made possible by this technology, while protecting against the risks and limitations amidst the hype.

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ABOUT the author and OUTSIGHT INTERNATIONAL

Harry Wilson
Harry is a product person and consultant on applying technology for impact. He has led teams which have built products used by the WHO, World Bank, UNICEF, Inter-American Development Bank, as well as acted as a consultant to companies like Facebook for Good, Microsoft and Intel. His specialist areas are AI & data, blockchain and communities.

ChatGPT
ChatGPT is a sophisticated language model powered by OpenAI's state-of-the-art GPT-3.5 architecture. With a vast knowledge base spanning a wide range of topics, ChatGPT is an expert in answering questions and generating natural language responses that are both informative and engaging.

Outsight International
Outsight International provides services to the humanitarian and development sector in an efficient and agile way. Outsight International builds on the range of expertise offered by a network of Associates in order to deliver quality results adapted to the specific tasks at hand. If you’d like to discuss working with the Outsight team, please get in touch or follow us on LinkedIn for regular updates.