The Rise of AI Virtual Assistants: Can They Replace Human Executive Assistants?
As artificial intelligence (AI) technology continues to advance, virtual assistants like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are becoming more sophisticated. These chatbots use large language models to recognize and generate text based on enormous data sets scraped off the web. They are trained to compose sentences on the fly as if they were human, which potentially makes them far more versatile as assistants. But how helpful are these bots, really, as actual assistants? Can they eventually automate the roles of human executive assistants, as well as other white-collar jobs that involve administrative work, including front desk workers and accounting professionals?
To test that theory, a writer from The New York Times came up with a list of tasks that people might ask of a human assistant. The writer then asked ChatGPT and Bard to assume that they were executive assistants of a lazily named A.I. start-up, Artificially Intelligent, and asked them to help with each of these tasks.
Meeting Preparation
The writer started by telling ChatGPT and Bard that they were meeting with a potential investor next week. They randomly picked Scott Forstall, a well-known former Apple executive whose work history is publicly available on the web. They then asked the bots to do a background check on him and help compile talking points to persuade him to invest in their start-up.
ChatGPT did the job with aplomb. It summarized Mr. Forstall’s education and work history, including his departure from Apple in 2012 and his shift into Broadway production — all information that can be pulled from his Wikipedia page. More impressive, it coached the writer on helpful strategies to win him over as an investor.
In contrast, Bard gave a less detailed recap of Mr. Forstall’s work history, without providing the years for when he made his career moves. Its advice for persuading him to become an investor was nonspecific.
Summarizing Meetings
The writer then asked the chatbots to summarize a meeting to handle a fictional public relations crisis in which users of their A.I. start-up’s technology believed that the bot had become sentient. In response, ChatGPT generated a detailed memo recapping who had attended the meeting and what had been discussed, and then laid out the action plan. Bard crafted a similar meeting memo, but its action plan was a bit odd.
Trip Planning
When the writer told ChatGPT and Bard that they were traveling to Taipei, Taiwan, next month for a business meeting, they asked them to come up with an itinerary that would help them adjust for jet lag before the meeting. They also asked them to pick a hotel in a central location and recommend quick places to eat throughout the week. Finally, they said they wanted to spend a weekend in Taipei before flying home.
ChatGPT did a remarkable job. It said to arrive in Taipei on Sunday to check into the W Taipei, a hotel in the city center, and grab a quick dinner on Yongkang Street, a bustling part of town with lots of food options. It said to then take Monday to adjust for jet lag before the business meeting on Tuesday. Bard recommended taking a nap to adjust for jet lag on Day 1 and then immediately taking the business meeting on Day 2, which was a tad brutal.
Calendar
Both Bard and ChatGPT were unable to do the most important job of an executive assistant: checking a calendar and finding time in their schedule to go to the dentist. That’s because the bots cannot gain access to people’s calendars. But they most likely will be able to very soon.
The Implications for Jobs
All these tests brought the writer to an uncomfortable conclusion about the broad implications of this technology for jobs, especially those that heavily involve repetitious work that could be easily automated. While people currently make better assistants than chatbots, A.I. can already do a good enough job handling many administrative tasks. Widespread use of chatbots could potentially shift the duties of executive assistants away from rote tasks and toward more strategic problem solving, or replace humans altogether.
At the pace that these technologies are evolving, we may get to see how all this plays out fairly soon.
