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“ChatGPT is bullshit,” with Marc Cortés

In a professional environment where artificial intelligence seems to be the panacea for any task, professor Marc Cortés suggested a much-needed break for critical reflection.
Marc Cortes

With the title “ChatGPT is bullshit,” Esade Alumni held a Refresher Program session led by professor Marc Cortés (FTMBA 99), an academic collaborator in the PMD, Rethinking Business IA, Contol de Gestión, PDC, and AMP programs.

Understanding the tool

The session started with a warning. Even though AI makes processes that used to take hours easier, Marc Cortés suggested that the risk is making mistakes. “It’s not that AI lies; it just does what it was programmed to do: try to give the best answers to the questions we ask it,” he said.

Cortés insisted that the “bullshit” that AI sometimes generates comes from our own lack of understanding. We are not dealing with an entity that “understands” the world, but with a statistical engine. “Generative AI calculates statistical likelihoods with the data it has and tries to provide the best answer, although perhaps we don’t quite fully understand what this means,” he said. In this sense, even though AI has been used massively since November 2022, Cortés says that we are still lacking the perspective we need.

One of the session’s most powerful conclusions was the need to be experts in what we delegate to it. To interact with AI effectively, we have to have in-depth knowledge of the topics we discuss with it. Without this basic knowledge, it is impossible to detect the model’s lack of rigor.

Throughout history, we have used technology to automate low-value tasks… but now AI enables us to automate tasks that we may not know how to do on our own. Cortés believes that to use it properly in a professional setting, we have to know a great deal about the topics we discuss with it: “If it’s within your area of knowledge, you’re going to work better, gain time, and generate value in decision-making with AI. But if it is not your area of knowledge, AI is going to learn, but you attribute it with content it doesn’t have and you take a risk with the resulting decisions. An augmented professional is one who knows what they know and is able to use AI to boost value. It’s a competitive advantage. That’s why the first thing we have to do is ask ourselves how to use it from the perspective of the augmented professional.”

Marc Cortes

The new paradigm

The challenge for organizations is not just to adopt AI but to do so with a systematic vision, minimizing risks and ensuring that the technology enhances – instead of diluting – the organization’s strategic value. In Cortés’s opinion, the most common mistake is viewing AI as an isolated tool. However, the key lies in understanding the context and ecosystem in which we are operating. It is not enough to automate tasks; we have to grasp the major transformations that are already occurring in the market.

One of the most outstanding examples to illustrate this was the concept of Agentic Commerce, an evolution in e-commerce in which AI agents seek, compare, and purchase products on behalf of the user. This technology uses AI to execute transactions and personalize the shopping experience by automating the process from beginning to end. Thus, we’re shifting from an AI that “responds” to one that “acts” and makes purchase or negotiation decisions autonomously. If a company doesn’t understand how this change impacts their business model, they run a real risk of becoming obsolete.

“If somebody doesn’t know what Agentic Commerce is, for example, they’re far from understanding what may happen, and you have to keep up. The cost of technological disruption today is close to zero. That’s why we have to visualize the disruption, understand how this ecosystem works, and consider using this technology from the standpoint of where it can take us. ChatGPT is bullshit because it is a powerful technology, but not in the direction we’re taking it,” Cortés concluded.

You can watch the session at the Esade Alumni Content Hub.

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