5 Weaknesses of ChatGPT for B2B Industrial Companies

There has been a ton of buzz around ChatGPT, and many questions have been raised about its accuracy, relevance, and reliability. While it can be a useful tool, it’s important to have a clear understanding of where it falls short. In order to get a sense of the type of content ChatGPT produces, and get some questions answered, I asked it directly – “What are the biggest limitations of ChatGPT?” This blog shares the 5 ChatGPT weaknesses it shared, and an interpretation of the answers it gave.

Before we get into all of that, let’s cover some of the basics. 

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot developed by OpenAI, and uses a GPT (generative pre-trained transformer) language model that can generate human-like text. And it’s a pretty big deal. It can answer nuanced questions in great detail and is already being used to write and compose things like emails, essays, and code.

The buzz around ChatGPT has led to a mix of emotions, from excitement to major concerns. In the world of marketers and copywriters, some questions we’ve asked are whether ChatGPT can essentially do our job for us. Another question is whether ChatGPT will replace Google Search, forever altering the search marketing landscape.

While there’s a lot we don’t know yet, what is certain is AI technology isn’t going anywhere. Instead of feeling threatened, it’s important to recognize the ways it can enhance work-life, while also being wary of its limitations.

ChatGPT Weaknesses

So, what are the limitations of ChatGPT? Here is what ChatGPT itself has to say: 

ChatGPT, like any language model, has some potential pitfalls or limitations:

1. Lack of common sense: While ChatGPT is capable of generating responses in natural language, it doesn’t possess common sense or background knowledge like a human does. This can lead to errors or misunderstandings in some conversations.

While this very explanation reads as though a human wrote it, this is saying that, unlike a human, ChatGPT doesn’t know the context of a question, nor can it pick up on things like sarcasm, humor, tone, etc. It may provide answers that are technically correct but lacks relevance. 

For most B2B businesses, but especially manufacturers, ChatGPT would not be the most reliable for researching or writing about complex processes or specialized information. While ChatGPT can give some pretty good foundational information that at times even goes beyond the basics, it is not producing original thought or is an expert in any given topic.

2. Limited contextual understanding: ChatGPT is designed to generate responses based on patterns it has learned from a large dataset of text. However, it may not always understand the full context of a conversation, leading to inaccurate or irrelevant responses.

It’s important to understand exactly how ChatGPT gathers information. It uses a large dataset from a variety of sources, for example, Wikipedia, news articles, journals, etc. ChatGPT doesn’t respond by “reading” your question but instead generates a predictive response based on patterns it finds among those sources, and picks up on the most important words or phrases in the question. 

Whether you are researching a topic or attempting to generate copy, bear in mind that you don’t necessarily know the source or accuracy of the information. If you’re going for subject-matter expertise, the copy it produces won’t read as an original thought since it’s essentially gathering and reproducing text across a wide range of sources.

3. Repetitive responses: Due to the nature of the underlying algorithm used by ChatGPT, it may generate repetitive or similar responses to a single user query. This can limit the effectiveness of the chatbot in providing engaging and relevant conversations for the user.

This is important when you consider how you are going to be using ChatGPT. For example, maybe you want to write a LinkedIn post about balancing profitability during supply chain disruption. How many users might also be asking the same question to ChatGPT, and reusing the content somewhere else? 

The potential result is a lot of repetitive and mundane content across the internet. In addition, ChatGPT has its own “voice” which can start to feel very recognizable. The more you use ChatGPT, it becomes clear when something has been copied from AI versus a human source. All this said, to get the most “unique” response from ChatGPT, you want to make sure your questions are unique in and of themselves. This increases the likelihood of a more thought-provoking response. 

4. Vulnerability to biases: Like any machine learning system, ChatGPT may be vulnerable to biases that exist in the data it has been trained on. This can lead to biased or unfair responses in certain contexts.

Due to the selected datasets that ChatGPT is trained on, there may be bias in the information it reproduces. Sample bias comes into play since only a small portion of what has been written on a certain topic feeds into the language model, and within that dataset is conflicting information. It begs the question of how ChatGPT can discern the “truth”, and whether it can evolve quickly enough as attitudes around certain topics frequently change.

Considering ChatGPT as an authority is dangerous, and when it comes to opinion pieces, sometimes it’s best to just do your own research and form your own conclusion. 

5. Inability to handle complex tasks: While ChatGPT is capable of generating natural language responses, it may not be able to handle complex tasks that require external knowledge or manual intervention. Thus, it may not be suitable for some business or customer support use cases.

This is especially key for manufacturers and industrial businesses. ChatGPT should not be a go-to resource for information about specific products, their features or functionalities, or how to troubleshoot maintenance or calibration issues for highly specialized equipment. Instead, you and your team should serve as the experts and the only source when it comes to that information, and your customers deserve real-human support from the engineers and manufacturers behind the product. 

This is where ChatGPT may be slightly more suitable for B2C, where requests like “where is my order?” might have a less complex answer than asking specific questions about calibrating a piece of equipment, for example. 

What’s the verdict?

Bearing in mind its limitations, ChatGPT is worth exploring. At best it can be used as a tool to help generate some inspiration and maybe even outlines for content, and at worst it is a fun toy to play around with. AI is here to stay whether we like it or not, and it’s worth giving some exploration to see how it might work for you.

Want to discuss more tools and emerging trends in industrial marketing? Let’s get in touch!