Your Reaction to ChatGPT Matters (More than You Think)

Your reaction to ChatGPT matters more than you think.

Last week, I wrote this blog post highlighting 7 ChatGPT prompts that lawyers should start using.

I aimed that post at lawyers particularly for 2 reasons.

First, ChatGPT has the potential to unlock enormous efficiency gains for lawyers. Second, lawyers are historically bad at adopting new tech and need a nudge.

In fact, one of my biggest frustrations in Big Law was the slow adoption of new tech that could make my job significantly easier.

It’s not a stretch to say that many people in professional services industries might feel this way.

But what does your attitude to new tech and innovation, like ChatGPT, say about you as a person?

Diffusion of Innovation Theory

Everett Rogers’ theory of Diffusion of Innovation (published in his book Diffusion of Innovations, 1962) tells us that the adoption of innovation in a society is a process that occurs over time.

Summarised, the high-level idea is this: How quickly you adopt new technology relative to other people in your society depends on whether you are 1 of 5 different types of adopter.

• Innovators, who are typically the first to adopt new tech
• Early adopters
• Early majority
• Late majority
• Laggards, who are the last to adopt new tech

Take a look at this bell curve diagram:

We can see that 16% of people (innovators and early adopters) in any group will adopt new tech before the rest of that group.

In other words, the vast majority of us (84% to be exact) won’t change or adopt new tech until we see others successfully change first.

Which are You? Early Adopter or Laggard?

Innovators are fearless trailblazers who aren’t scared by uncertainty. We might imagine them as the founders of tech startups and inventors. The Elon Musks and Thomas Edisons of the world.

Most of us won’t be innovators, so let’s focus on the early adopters.

Early adopters like being seen as thought leaders. They’re ambitious, have intellectual curiosity and patience and are comfortable with uncertainty. They tend to not shy away from risk and look for competitive advantage over their peers.

They’re the cool kids who had iPhones before everyone else.

According to Rogers, early adopters will decrease the uncertainty relating to a new idea by adopting and testing it.

That’s why they’re the first group of people that sales teams of any new tech should look to sell to. They’re the ones most likely to take a punt on your new tech and become a product evangelist.

There also seem to be benefits to being an early adopter (apart from being cool).

Early adopters tend to have greater influence in the development of innovations because they give feedback earlier in the development process. By the time tech is used by the majority, they’re also the most comfortable with the the tech and the most practiced at using it.

Laggards, by comparison, are traditionalists. They’re suspicious of new ideas and change. They’re the last to adopt any new tech.

Being a laggard isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It may be that laggards stand the most to lose from taking risk on innovations – hence their lethargy.

Don’t be too quick to stereotype older people as laggards either.

Just ask Roger Skaer, the 51 year old “F*ck Around and Find Out Guy”. His signature catchphrase epitomises the early adopter’s attitude – the more you experiment, the more you learn.

ChatGPT, Innovation and Risk

There are lots of good reasons for not being in a rush to adopt new tech. Being an early adopter carries a high cost of making mistakes. You might have no personal interest or good use case for the tech. You might also be pressured by society not to change.

Whether you’re an early adopter or a laggard says a lot about your risk appetite.

And like any other innovation, ChatGPT and its underlying tech represents a significant step forward in AI and computing but it’s not without risk.

Lawyers have quickly pointed out the data privacy and intellectual property risks around ChatGPT and GPT-3 powered apps.

Cybersecurity professionals warn that ChatGPT can write scarily ‘human’ phishing emails. ChatGPT’s lack of morality and ability for bias are also an issue.

Over time, the tech will need to be developed to address these real and valid concerns.

But we’ve done it countless times before.

Seatbelts first started being used in 1885 in taxis in New York to keep tourists travelling in cars safe, but it was only by 1966 that all cars were required by law to have seatbelts in America.

We’d now consider anyone driving a car without a seatbelt wildly reckless, yet that didn’t stop the car from becoming the main mode of transport for millions. And even now, using a car still carries risk.

Luckily we’re able to innovate a lot faster now, so there’s good reason to feel confident that the risks around AI and ChatGPT will be figured out quickly.

Assuming that’s true, being an early adopter of AI and ChatGPT could pay off massively.

So, which are you – early adopter or laggard?