ChatGPT and others: what platform businesses need to know about AI

The printing press, the steam engine, the transistor. Again and again, great inventions have led to fundamental change in the way we live. The development of what are known as large language models (LLMs), such as GPT-3 and most recently ChatGPT from the American start-up OpenAI, also has the potential to be an invention of that order. But what exactly is happening here? And what does it mean for platform business models? We take a look into the future.

ChatGPT is a conversational chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to understand human language and generate text. What is particularly impressive is the range of topics and the quality of the answers. Until now, developers had to train chatbots for specific purposes with considerable effort. ChatGPT can already summarise texts, analyse and write code, solve maths homework and much more.

We are witnessing the emergence of a new kind of steam engine, one that offers incredible possibilities. What of this potential is realistically usable, and which of these applications can be used to improve platforms, is still open. Just as open as the question of the risks. Big questions, then, that we want to explore.