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ChatGPT: Productivity boost or security risk? We talk to three Ottawa firms who were quick to adopt – Ottawa Business Journal

Almost one-third of Canadian businesses are now using ChatGPT, according to a recent report, and many Ottawa businesses are among them.

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Almost one-third of Canadian businesses are now using ChatGPT, according to a recent report, and many Ottawa businesses are among them.

In the past year, AI adoption has skyrocketed, according to the Canadian Business Spending Trends report for the first quarter of 2024 from financial services company Float.

The report found that, in just one year, the number of small and mid-sized Canadian businesses with ChatGPT subscriptions had doubled, with nearly one-third adopting the technology.

According to the report, half of tech companies have now subscribed, up from about 25 per cent at the beginning of 2023. Non-tech companies are catching up, with 26 per cent now subscribed, compared to just 12 per cent the previous year.

“With Canadian labour productivity at crisis levels, it's encouraging to see Canadian SMBs dramatically increase their investment in AI,” said Rob Khazzam, Float CEO and co-founder, in the report. “It’s a promising leading indicator of Canadian businesses generating more value through investments in innovation and tools that reduce manual employee tasks in favour of more high-impact work.”

Ottawa digital marketing agency seoplus+ is one local company that jumped on the technology early, co-founder Brock Murray told OBJ.

“We knew being a digital agency, there was a lot of opportunity with the technology,” Murray said. “We do a lot of things like content development, advertising, research for things like user experience. So there are a lot of practical applications that were really attractive to us.”

As with any new technology, integrating ChatGPT into the workplace wasn’t without its challenges, Murray said.

For one, the platform didn’t have a group subscription option in its first few months of operation, making it difficult to get the company's 50-some employees connected.

There was also the challenge of training the entire team on a brand new system.

“In the early stages, we did what we called ‘Training Thursdays,’ where I did a presentation to the team to explain the practical use cases for the different departments,” said Murray. “I just kind of got the wheels turning for them on how they could use it.”

For some employees, it took a while to adjust to the change.

“There were people who were excited about it, excited to use it and play around with it,” he said. “But there were some people who were defensive. They saw it as a bit of a threat. But over time, there’s been a lot better adoption from the team.”

He added that there’s still skepticism among the company’s client base. While some clients have embraced the technology wholeheartedly, others have raised concerns, including about privacy and regulations.

He’s seen those same concerns being raised by other businesses, which are hesitant to integrate AI into their own practices.

“Overall, I think a lot of businesses don’t know where to start, how to craft those policies for internal use (of AI),” he said. “I think it’s still very early stages. It’s been two years (since ChatGPT launched), but I think a lot of people haven’t really dug in or really adopted it as much as they could. But I do think there’s a positive outlook there.”

Meladul Ahmadzai, CEO of Ottawa-based Taleam Systems, said he uses ChatGPT to help create content strategy plans for clients and to update and optimize content. He said it can also be useful to prompt fresh ideas for new content when needed.

“English is my second language,” he said. “With ChatGPT, I can optimize long sentences and paragraphs to have a better flow. I can also customize it to plain language so that my customers can easily understand.”

Ahmadzai added that he was glad to see the federal government putting more support behind the development of AI technology. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the feds would commit $2.4 billion to the sector.

“I appreciate that and I can’t wait to see what comes next,” Ahmadzai said.

Jordan Hawn, owner and CEO of Ottawa brand and marketing firm Hawn Consulting, said the chatbot’s generative AI technology has saved his company hours of work and made his business more efficient.

Hawn considers himself an early adopter, taking interest in ChatGPT around the time of its launch.

“It’s integrated into every component of our lives in some capacity,” he told OBJ. “As soon as the news came out, I started deep-diving into its capabilities. There’s information out there, but I’ve tried to keep up to the best of my abilities.”

Hawn has found a variety of different ways to use ChatGPT, as well as other AI platforms, in his business. He said AI has been useful as a virtual assistant, as well as a notetaker and transcriber during meetings. He’s also used it as a research tool and to evaluate and expand on his work. In the hiring process, for example, he said he can plug in a list of questions he’s already drawn up for candidates, then ask the AI for more ideas.

“We really leverage it as a tool, not something that’s going to be a final result for clients,” he said. “It’s a tool that helps us be efficient and leverage our already strong knowledge in certain areas and build upon it.”

However, he added that, especially at this early stage, AI is still a tool to be used with caution.

“It’s a question of what you can trust and what’s going to be the result of the things you’re putting into this,” said Hawn. “One thing to be mindful of for all business owners is the privacy side. You should not be putting confidential client information or personal details about yourself into ChatGPT.”

Hawn, who is also a former professor, said AI leaders, governments and educational institutions need to facilitate and provide more education on the technology so businesses can keep up with the rapidly changing landscape.

“We don’t know the cybersecurity risks at this point,” he said. “The companies handling this are trying to keep up. But the systems are learning so quickly that they’re really struggling with that. AI is embedded into everything now … We need to have more knowledge and more people need to be fully aware and cautious. It’s important to understand its full capabilities and institutions need a better approach to actually be on the forefront of this.”

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