For months, the conversational bot ChatGPT has wowed the world with its capabilities.
It can easily complete human work: whether it is writing a Wall Street Journal-style article, typing out smooth code after receiving a request, or even automatically generating a website using only handwritten manuscripts, etc. When it passed human law, foreign language, college entrance examination and other examinations with high scores, people had to admit that ChatGPT was close to or even surpassed the abilities of some humans to a certain extent.
Will ChatGPT replace people? Will people be unemployed? This is the lingering “fear” people have when they talk about ChatGPT. However, that day seems to have arrived sooner than imagined.
Yunfei is the founder and CEO of Yingteng Technology. This Internet company is located in Zhengzhou. Its main business is marketing and "bringing goods" on social platforms such as Xiaohongshu. The team size is about 15 people. However, since its founding at the end of last year, After Ren Yunfei came into contact with ChatGPT, everything changed. Yunfei is "obsessed" with ChatGPT. He once used more than 200 derivative products based on ChatGPT within a week, and slowly figured out how to control ChatGPT.
The turning point came in January of this year. When Yunfei tried to submit the company's copywriting template to ChatGPT, he found that the copywriting provided by the latter was close to, or even exceeded, the copywriting written by employees. After weeks of wrangling, he laid off all seven of his copywriting team. And ChatGPT helped him make this decision.
After realizing that ChatGPT could "reduce costs and increase efficiency" for the company, Yunfei quickly realized that this was a good business. In February this year, he established a new team to study how to help companies complete the "replacement" of people. On the advice of ChatGPT, he chose the customer service industry. In March, he developed a customer service system based on ChatGPT - according to him, an e-commerce company that used the above system had laid off 25 employees of its entire customer service team.
Similar actions are still happening. On April 12, the well-known public relations and advertising service provider BlueFocus also sent an email saying that in order to curb the momentum of "hollowing out core capabilities" and to "fully embrace AIGC (AI-generated content)", the management decided to cease operations indefinitely. There are four types of outsourcing expenses: creative design, plan writing, copywriting, and short-term employees. The blue cursor has indicated that the content of the email is true.
Can machines "replace" people? Yunfei's story currently shows that it can, and this process is accelerating. This is an aspect under the tide of this era. As humans, perhaps the question we really need to think about is, why are humans inferior to machines? How can people avoid the fear of being replaced by machines?
The following is Yunfei’s self-report:
Key to improving ChatGPT productivity:
"Tuning Accuracy"
When I saw the artificial copy generated by ChatGPT in the dialog box, I was amazed. At that moment, I knew I probably wouldn’t need those 7 copywriters anymore. Of course, this surprise did not happen out of thin air - it stems from my long-term obsessive study of ChatGPT and the continuous optimization and iteration of Prompt (ChatGPT's chat prompt word).
In early December last year, ChatGPT became a big hit. A friend shared it with me and said it was very suitable for my business and asked me to try it. I was pleasantly surprised as soon as I started using it. I didn’t expect it to be better than Baidu and could give very systematic answers. After a few days, I was thinking about how to combine it with the company's business.
I founded Yingteng Technology in 2021, specializing in graphic and text delivery business, which is to publish graphic and text content on social media to drive product sales. At that time, I hired 7 copywriters and 4 operators to do this. The copywriters wrote the copywriting according to the "Standardized Writing of Inteng Technology Product Delivery Copywriting" template I wrote, while the operation staff were responsible for publishing and data analysis. This business relies heavily on text processing, something ChatGPT happens to be good at.
So at that time, I divided this writing template into 10 times of 2,000 words each time and gave it to ChatGPT. At that time, the copywriting written by ChatGPT was okay, but it was not ready for direct use and still required manual modification.
By early January this year, online discussions about ChatGPT were becoming hot again. After reading other people's powerful use cases, I realized that maybe it wasn't that ChatGPT wasn't powerful enough, but that my training method was wrong. So I started researching like crazy.
For more than a week, I was addicted to ChatGPT and couldn't help myself. I studied day and night in the office, and I didn’t see any clients. I didn’t feel tired at all, but very excited. At that time, I tried more than 200 products based on ChatGPT at home and abroad, including daily report generator, user portrait generator, traffic report generator, etc. The more I use it, the more powerful ChatGPT becomes. It's like you've discovered a treasure and don't want anyone to know about it. It touched my heart so deeply that I almost burst into tears, feeling grateful that I could use this thing "in this lifetime."
During this period of intensive study, I slowly learned the core method of tuning ChatGPT—that is, better prompts. For example, I will control variables and change the input method of Prompt to see what changes are in the output results of ChatGPT. Finally, I summarized these three Prompt rules.
First, ChatGPT is better at identifying precise computer language (the latter will give clear input, operation, output instructions, etc.), so your expression must be as precise as "computer language"; Second, ChatGPT is better at identifying professionalism language (for example, "stock market price" is more professionally expressed as "stock price"), which actually tests your knowledge structure; third, ChatGPT is better at recognizing English.
Take professional language as an example. For example, in the past I would say to ChatGPT, "Please use words that an 8-year-old child can understand, to describe the parameters of xx product." But in fact, the more professional expression of this sentence should be, "Please use natural language. Describe the parameters of xx product." Because in the eyes of ChatGPT, natural language is human popular language. Using this professional language prompt will get better results.
Yunfei uses professional discourse "natural language" in Prompt
I started using this set of prompts, combined with the copywriting template, and let ChatGPT help us write the copywriting. As it turned out, it produced copy that was as good as, or even better than, our copywriting staff. The copy it outputs fully meets our usage standards. ——It can be seen that the key factor that determines the productivity of ChatGPT is "tuning accuracy".
After Yunfei repeatedly prompted, ChatGPT produced copywriting that was “comparable to manual work”
Considering the convenience of use, we simply made this solution into a tool. It is no exaggeration to say that this is at least dozens of times more powerful than any tool we have used in the past to improve the efficiency of copywriting creation.
By mid-January, I was convinced that ChatGPT and derivatives could completely replace those 7 copywriters. As a boss, I will definitely consider reducing costs and increasing efficiency. So, I thought about layoffs.
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The "Zhihu Copywriting Generator" tool produced by the Yunfei team
Wearing the cloak of "creative work",
Doing "mechanical work"?
Doing some math, the monthly salary of a full-time copywriter is about 4,500 yuan, and seven copywriters will cost about 30,000 yuan. The ChatGPT account only costs 480 yuan per month. This is a hundredfold cost reduction. Moreover, originally copywriters could only write 3 or 4 articles a day, but ChatGPT’s output was several times that of theirs, greatly increasing efficiency.
From a rational perspective, I should lay off employees. But from an emotional perspective, I still feel hesitant and painful.
I know how layoffs will affect employees, especially a copywriting colleague who has been with me for a year and a half. I really can't bear it. Humans are emotional creatures and sometimes cannot make rational decisions. During that half month, I was repeatedly struggling with whether to lay off employees or not. Later, I had an idea, why not ask this question to ChatGPT.
To be honest, the answer it gave me at first was not informative. So, I changed Prompt again and input several professional decision-making models into it, such as decision tree (classification model based on tree structure), Bayesian (classification model based on probability and statistics), and neural network (simulating the human nervous system). model) and linear regression (regression model based on linear model) and so on. In the end, ChatGPT gave me a very amazing answer.
It does not directly choose the answer of "cut" or "no cut", but creatively gives a third answer.
From its point of view, the issue I struggled with was not actually layoffs or not, but "how to reduce the guilt I feel towards the copywriter who has been with me the longest." This is indeed the case. In fact, I have already made the decision to lay off employees, but I just can't get rid of the guilt. ChatGPT helped me bring this question to the surface. Taking this as a breakthrough, I asked it what the solution was.
"Comprehensively consider employee emotions and corporate benefits" - In the end, I adopted the advice given by ChatGPT and arranged the copywriting colleague who had been with me the longest to a friend's company and ended the contract in an N+2 way. The other six colleagues ended their contracts directly on an N+2 basis. In this way, I solved the problem of layoffs.
Yunfei’s consultation process with ChatGPT on “layoffs and non-layoffs”
After they left, ChatGPT took over their work. I configured a ChatGPT Plus account for each of the remaining 4 operation employees, and asked ChatGPT to help them write copywriting directly. In this way, what originally required 11 people to do can now be done by 4 people. Our human efficiency has quadrupled, and our monthly income has also increased by 100,000 yuan.
On the day of layoffs, I called all my copywriting colleagues to the conference room and frankly told them that they were replaced because of ChatGPT.
This is more hurtful than I thought. After the meeting, some friends felt very lost and talked to me alone. He said that he never thought that a scene from a sci-fi movie would happen to him one day. He felt that even if he was replaced by another person with better copywriting, he could accept it. He was really unwilling to be replaced by ChatGPT.
If you want to ask me, why are people inferior to machines and replaced by machines? I want to ask you first, do you do machine-like work?
The machine is characterized by high repeatability, following prescribed processes and procedures without much creativity. Just like our copywriting, I have already written out the template. All you have to do is fill in the content according to this template. Is this a relatively mechanical job? If it's a mechanical job, how can you beat the machine?
Yunfei team's booklet "Standardized Writing of Product Delivery Copywriting for Yingteng Technology"
In fact, in the workplace, we are used to doing many things and give them creative meaning. For example, copywriting may be considered “creative” by you, but in fact, what they do is essentially mechanical work. From this perspective, a question that many white-collar workers may need to reflect on is: Is your job disguised as "creative work" and essentially doing "mechanical work"?
Many things that a white-collar worker does in the workplace, such as data entry, sorting and archiving, document management and archiving, application and processing of approvals, etc., in my opinion are actually "mechanical work".
Of course, I will also reflect on myself. Isn’t my work “mechanical”? Of course there will be. For example, I need to send and receive some information, sign a contract, stamp, etc. in a procedural manner. However, I also have irreplaceable parts of myself. For example, I have business thinking, can socialize with people, have resources at hand, etc. ChatGPT can't accompany me to dinner with clients or attend circle gatherings on my behalf, can it? This may be an "irreplaceable" part of my life.
As for the copywriting classmates who resigned, some of them still chose to continue working in this industry. They also started to buy our company’s ChatGPT course, determined to embrace AI and widen the gap with others. Of course, more fundamentally, they said they hope to do more "highly thinking" and "highly creative" work.
With ChatGPT,
Help other companies lay off workers
After the layoff incident, I have been deeply shocked by the capabilities of ChatGPT. At that time, I felt that I had the responsibility to promote this good thing to others. For example, helping other industries to "reduce costs and increase efficiency" - of course, this is also a good business opportunity.
In February, I established a new business "Together AI" based on ChatGPT and hired 6 developers and 2 business people. The core of the business is to create application products based on ChatGPT.
At that time, ChatGPT was on the cusp and time was tight. In order to quickly identify the entrepreneurial field, I directly asked ChatGPT, "What are the most likely to be replaced positions in China? Please list 25-30 and rank them." Then, we made the answers into a survey questionnaire and sent it Came to the entrepreneurial communication circle I was in. There are about 1,000 people in this circle, many of whom are entrepreneurs. I let everyone vote on which positions are easier to replace manually.
Finally, as a result of the voting, the top three were customer service, editors, etc. I thought about it, and it seems that choosing the customer service industry can best bring us positive feedback.
I found a few friends in the e-commerce field and quickly learned about the pain points of the customer service industry. I found that the labor investment in this industry is very heavy. A friend even hired a customer service team of 25 people to respond to messages in three shifts. However, there is a lot of repetitive work. For example, e-commerce companies have built a standard question and answer database. Human customer service mainly collects answers from this database to provide consumers with answers. In theory, based on this corpus question and answer database, ChatGPT can also answer questions. Ability.
In this way, we judged that we can create a customized customer service solution based on ChatGPT. To be on the safe side, I tested the market demand. I asked the designer to draw a prototype of the product within one day, and soon 5 or 6 e-commerce bosses came over and each paid a deposit to buy a set. I realized there was a real market for this thing.
It took a total of three days from having the business idea to getting the deposit from the customer. It only took us two weeks from getting the deposit to finishing the product. Currently, this ChatGPT customer service system has been used in the client company for a month.
If you want to ask, why are there so many companies doing customer service solutions based on large models in the same period, and we can be the first to implement them. I think it is because our execution speed is relatively fast, and this is inseparable from the help of ChatGPT. For example, during the product development process, if I encounter a problem that the machine cannot answer accurately, I will directly ask ChatGPT what to do. Under its guidance, we developed products faster.
We also have no psychological baggage. So what if it doesn't work? We have at least tried it on ChatGPT, a hot topic. Even if we fail, we can accumulate experience for our future entrepreneurship.
At present, this ChatGPT customer service not only has the logic and tone of human speech, but also answers faster and more accurately than humans. And it doesn’t require any rest at all and can respond 24/7.
The customer currently using our system is a second-class e-commerce company in Zhengzhou. They are in the home decoration category and rank at the top of JD.com and Taobao. In the first week of using our ChatGPT customer service system, they laid off all 25 people in the original customer service team, leaving no one behind. This was really beyond my imagination. I thought I would have to wait at least a month. Now, they only have three customer service managers left to deal with some questions that ChatGPT really cannot answer.
After the one-month trial period is over, we will immediately promote this customer service system to all customers. Now, there are some customers from Chengdu, Yibin and other places who want to purchase this system after learning from us and visiting. This means that more customer service staff will be laid off soon across the country.
nine robot assistants,
Personal life is inseparable from ChatGPT
In addition to helping the company's business, ChatGPT has also "taken over" my personal life.
I sorted out what things in my life can be handed over to ChatGPT, such as text writing, thinking and decision-making, etc. In the end, I deployed 9 exclusive ChatGPT bots to take care of my life.
For example, "daily newspaper robot". I set a rule for myself that I should send a daily report to all employees at five o'clock every day, so that everyone knows what the CEO did today. It turns out that I have to write for a long time. But now, I use Prompt to "feed" the daily writing structure to ChatGPT, and it can write it for me. Every day, I only need to enter what I do, and it will generate a daily report with my name and tone of voice, and send it to all employees with one click.
Another example is "Xiaofei AI Decision-making Robot". This is the tool I picked up when ChatGPT made the layoff decision for me. AI has no interference from human emotions and will only analyze and judge based on facts and logic. So it can help me avoid cognitive blind spots and make better decisions. For example, when you are debating whether to have dinner with a certain boss - if you don't eat, you will lose the order; if you eat, you will offend your girlfriend. Then it will give the answer.
I also sold this set of robots to other bosses for nearly 30,000 yuan. It can be seen that personal needs are also business opportunities.
Yunfei’s “AI decision-making robot”
Let’s put it this way, these 9 robots have saved me at least 60% of my time. I usually finish things in the morning, and then drink tea and chat with friends about directions in the afternoon. That’s why now, I can give interviews calmly. I no longer dwell on the things themselves, but can now do the things that really matter.
So I said, I can no longer live without ChatGPT. A while ago, ChatGPT closed many accounts. I felt particularly sad, as if something was suddenly missing from my life. Sometimes I even think that the so-called artificial intelligence has gradually become that I am an artificial intelligence and it is intelligence. My artificial intelligence cannot do without its intelligence.
Several tools based on ChatGPT developed by Yunfei Company
But in fact, facing ChatGPT, there are still only a few people who are willing to explore and study it. This is especially true for older people. Many people are even resistant to it, thinking, "Isn't this just for children to play with? Why should I study it?" And of those who are studying it, very few of them will actually do anything about it. Most people are in the wait-and-see stage.
I have always been a person who is more willing to learn new things. I was born in 1996 and I am 27 years old this year. My college major was engineering, but I learned computer languages on my own. Because I often hear people who work in technology say, "Isn't this just a matter of writing a script?" So I decided to learn it. This is why I can interact with ChatGPT better now.
After graduating in 2018, I went to a consulting company. At that time, we mainly diagnosed, analyzed and solved problems for some enterprises. During those two years or so, I accumulated a lot of business knowledge and methods.
Perhaps it is these reasons that made me more keen to step into the trend of graphic and text-based products in 2020. This year, I seized the opportunity of ChatGPT again.
I once watched a TED talk, which mentioned that a person's 20-30 years old is their golden period. At this time, people are under less pressure in all aspects, and their thinking patterns, emotional patterns, interpersonal communication patterns, etc. have not yet been finalized. So don’t waste time at this time, be sure to seize the opportunity to grow. This inspired me a lot and made me rethink my life. I used to start scrolling through Douyin when I was very tired when I got home from get off work. But now, I will learn these new things.
In the future, I think the gap between those who can use AI and those who cannot use AI will become wider and wider. In the long run, the former will definitely eliminate the latter. Therefore, we can break down what AI can do in our daily work and combine our competitiveness with AI. I think only in this way can we achieve exponential growth, so as not to be "replaced" by machines or "eliminated" by the times.