VOA科学技术2023--Businesses Use AI Tools Despite Risks

More American businesses are starting to use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to come up with new ideas and to deal with customers.

Mattel is known for making children's toys. The company recently used an AI image generator¹ called DALL-E to come up with ideas for new Hot Wheels toy cars.

The used vehicle seller CarMax is using ChatGPT to gather thousands of customer comments. The social media service Snapchat has added a chatbot to its messaging service. And Instacart, a delivery service, now uses ChatGPT to answer food questions.

Even the Coca-Cola company plans to use AI to help create new marketing² content. It has not said exactly how it plans to use the technology. But the move shows that businesses are under pressure to use the tools that many of their employees and customers are already trying on their own.

"We must embrace the risks," Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey said in a video announcing a partnership³ with OpenAI — maker⁴ of both DALL-E and ChatGPT.

Some experts warn that businesses should carefully consider possible harms to customers, society, and their own companies before choosing to use AI tools in the workplace.

Claire Leibowicz is with The Partnership on AI, a nonprofit group. The group recently released recommendations for companies producing AI-generated images, audio and other media.

"I want people to think deeply before deploying⁵ this technology," Leibowicz said. "They should play around... but we should also think, what purpose are these tools serving in the first place?"

There is a reason for the concern.

While text generators⁶ like ChatGPT can make the process of writing emails and marketing documents faster and easier, they also appear to present misinformation as fact.

And image generators like DALL-E are trained in copying widely available digital art and photography. This has raised copyright concerns from the creators of those works.

"For companies that are really in the creative industry, if they want to make sure that they have copyright protection for those models, that's still an open question," said Anna Gressel. She is with the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, which advises businesses on how to use AI.

Gressel said it is safer to use AI tools as a "thought partner" but still people as the creator of final products.

Rowan Curran is with the research and advisory⁷ company Forrester. He said AI tools should speed up some office work much like using word processors and spell checkers.

Curran said, "It's not like we're talking about having a large language model just generate an entire marketing campaign and have that launch without expert senior marketers and all kinds of other controls."

The growing interest in AI tools among the public has fueled growing competition among technology companies Microsoft, Amazon and Google.

Microsoft announced earlier this year it was investing billions more dollars into its partnership with OpenAI. Google is adding Bard⁸ chatbot to its search engine. And Amazon started working with Hugging Face to develop Bloom, a competitor to ChatGPT.

Words in This Story

customer - n. someone who buys goods or services from a business

content - n. ideas, facts, or images in a book, article, document...

embrace - v. to accept something readily

society - n. people in a community or country

copyright - n. the legal right to a book, recording⁹, etc... for a certain period of time

generate - v. to produce something

1 generator   

n.发电机，发生器

参考例句：

• All the while the giant generator poured out its power.巨大的发电机一刻不停地发出电力。
• This is an alternating current generator.这是一台交流发电机。

2 marketing   

n.行销，在市场的买卖，买东西

参考例句：

• They are developing marketing network.他们正在发展销售网络。
• He often goes marketing.他经常去市场做生意。

3 partnership   

n.合作关系，伙伴关系

参考例句：

• The company has gone into partnership with Swiss Bank Corporation.这家公司已经和瑞士银行公司建立合作关系。
• Martin has taken him into general partnership in his company.马丁已让他成为公司的普通合伙人。

4 maker   

n.制造者，制造商

参考例句：

• He is a trouble maker，You must be distant with him.他是个捣蛋鬼，你不要跟他在一起。
• A cabinet maker must be a master craftsman.家具木工必须是技艺高超的手艺人。

5 deploying   

（尤指军事行动）使展开( deploy的现在分词 )； 施展； 部署； 有效地利用

参考例句：

• Provides support for developing and deploying distributed, component-based applications. 为开发和部署基于组件的分布式应用程序提供支持。
• Advertisement, publishing, repair, and install-on-demand are all available when deploying your application. 在部署应用程序时提供公布、发布、修复和即需即装功能。

6 generators   

n.发电机，发生器( generator的名词复数 )；电力公司

参考例句：

• The factory's emergency generators were used during the power cut. 工厂应急发电机在停电期间用上了。
• Power can be fed from wind generators into the electricity grid system. 电力可以从风力发电机流入输电网。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 advisory   

adj.劝告的，忠告的，顾问的，提供咨询

参考例句：

• I have worked in an advisory capacity with many hospitals.我曾在多家医院做过顾问工作。
• He was appointed to the advisory committee last month.他上个月获任命为顾问委员会委员。

8 bard   

n.吟游诗人

参考例句：

• I'll use my bard song to help you concentrate!我会用我的吟游诗人歌曲帮你集中精神！
• I find him,the wandering grey bard.我发现了正在徘徊的衰老游唱诗人。

9 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。