Digital Excalibur: Unraveling Private GPT Models

Chat GPT - Is it a new source of power and influence?    

As I’ve watched the sudden explosion of ChatGPT and subsequent articles on how to use it, there has been little discussion on “What does it mean for my business, especially the small or medium sized business (SMB)? And more importantly, "How can I compete with the biggest companies?” The largest five tech companies all have an estimated 33,000 developers dedicated to Artificial Intelligence - that's a huge competitive advantage that scale brings. This fundamental big vs small got me thinking? What does it really mean? What are some of the implications? What does it mean for SMBs? So in this, first of three (maybe four articles) I am asking those questions? My focus is on those companies that build their own GPT models, and not those companies that simply use the open models (like Bard, OpenAI etc…)

Whenever I ask these types of questions I rely on the FaST℠ method – that’s a whole other article – With FaST℠ I pick a framework to help me organize thoughts. For these 3 articles, we’ll be using Alvin Toffler's fascinating work on power dynamics and applying Toffler’s lens to artificial intelligence and Generative Pretrained Transformer (GPT) models.

A refresher on digital power 

Toffler, a celebrated futurist, greatly influenced our understanding of societal change and power dynamics. In his insightful book, "Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century," he proposed a simple yet profound power trinity: (1) physical strength, (2) wealth and resources, and lastly (3) information.

Toffler identified physical power as the original form of power, wealth and resources as the means to control who could wield power, and information as the future's most potent source of power. We are now living in the era Toffler foresaw, the Information Age, where power is increasingly derived from access to and control over information.

Sidebar - Toffler’s Power Trinity Explained

In Alvin Toffler’s pivotal book “Powershift” he unveiled a conceptual framework outlining three pivotal forms of power throughout human history. He called this the Power Trinity. Firstly, there's Physical Power, representing the earliest form of human influence. This power was evident in physical might, such as the brute strength of a caveman or the militaristic might of ancient empires. Second is the power of Wealth and Resources. As societies evolved, power was no longer just about physical strength but controlling resources. Monarchs and magnates amassed wealth, land, and assets. This concentration of resources meant they could control, influence, and even determine who else could gain or exercise power. Lastly, Toffler introduced the idea of Informational Power. In an increasingly interconnected and digital world, he foresaw that those who control, access, and distribute information hold the ultimate power. This transition marks our move from industrial societies to ones ruled by knowledge and information. Toffler's Power Trinity provides a lens through which we can view the evolution of influence and control, understanding how they morph and shift as societies change and technologies evolve.

A New Digital “Excalibur”

Now, let's bring private Generative Pretrained Transformer (GPT) models into the picture. A GPT model is a type of artificial intelligence that's exceptionally good at understanding and generating a human-like response based on the information used to train it. GPT trained on images can generate images. Those trained on audio sources generate audio. And those trained on text text produced OpenAi’s – now famous ChatGPT. A "private" GPT model refers to models that rely on a company's proprietary data.

A tech company might use its vast repository of user data to train a private GPT model. For example, a software company has thousands of tech support and sales conversations. They could turn that information into a private tech support and sales chat bot. Obviously this is their private information that their competitors don’t specifically have but the public can use to ask questions.

But what about truly private information? Private company conversations with researchers, employees, partners; memos and research reports; presentations; and just about any human generated information (text, audio, images? This information could be put into a private chat gpt and only the “approved” employees and researchers could use this information; Only those “approved” can ask questions and access the collective knowledge. This unique advantage aligns well with Toffler’s power trinity.

Toffler uses the Kings of old, as an analogy to describe how power arises from wealth and resources. When Kings ruled they had the wealth to (1) buy the iron and coal (2) smelt the raw materials into steel (3) build a black smith (4) forge the steel into mighty swords and armor and (5) anoint its knights by giving them a mighty sword; creating a powerful army. This access to wealth and resources allowed Kings to hold power.

Private ChatGPT is similar. Today companies (1) collect and harvest data (2, 3, 4) smelt the data into a digital Excalibur [I’m referring to the Excalibur sword of legend, that whomever wielded would be King] and (5) anoint private armies with access to their own digital Excalibur.

The analogy works well, the big difference is that today we are not talking about money, coal and iron that can be turned into swords, but we are talking about money, private data that can be turned into private chat models. We haven’t figured out how to duplicate matter, but with digitization we can create duplicates. The ability to create ChatGPT swords is a whole lot easier than it was to create physical swords.

RECAP

In this first article, we discussed the power of private GPT models in the business world. Using Alvin Toffler's insights, we traced the evolution of power from physical strength, to wealth, and finally to information. Today, businesses use these models, compared to the legendary Excalibur, to gain an edge. Especially for smaller businesses, understanding this new tool is crucial in a digital landscape dominated by tech giants.

Moving to Article 2, we'll dive into how big corporations use these 'digital Excaliburs'. Think of them as the modern-day Knights of the Round Table, wielding power through exclusive AI tools. Now stay with us as we explore this powerful dynamic further, the big companies have an “Achilles heel” that smaller nimble businesses can exploit!