As part of a webinar-series on AI education for employees*, the Platform Industrie 4.0, led by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, addresses the potential as well as the challenges of AI for industry and SMEs. 

On the one hand, AI can help to reduce the workload of personnel, increase quality and counteract the shortage of skilled workers. On the other hand, however, the challenges, such as a lack of AI skills among employees, a low digital maturity level of companies or data protection concerns, should not be overlooked.

At Ella, we strongly believe that these challenges can only be effectively addressed through transparency and education, thereby enabling the great opportunities AI offers. As a provider of AI writing assistants, we are committed to the following principles:

• We want to proactively demystify this technology so that our customers can make informed decisions.
• We strive to provide our customers with a clear understanding of how our AI tools and data processing works. 
• We also support our customers every step of the way – from initial implementation to ongoing use – ensuring a consistently smooth and successful integration of our AI tools.

*Please note that the recorded webinar is only available in German.

ChatGPT impressively demonstrates how human-centric design and low-threshold access can get people to open up to the use of AI – and what it can make possible. Emails, applications, essays, program code, word games: There are almost no limits to the versatility of ChatGPT.

???? Know what you’re dealing with

Behind ChatGPT is a language model that outshines everything known so far. But it is important to bear in mind that it is designed to be a generalist: ChatGPT’s text completion relies on a wide range of content in its training data. We must therefore be aware that we are not dealing with quality-assured data in ChatGPT. The model aggregates speech-aware output from probabilities and patterns present in its comprehensive training data. It does not, however, guarantee factual accuracy, and so, in turn, users do not know whether a piece of information was “invented” or has a reliable source. Human expertise is needed to identify possible misstatements – and one strand of the current discourse around ChatGPT centres on the urgency of developing literacy and skills in this space.

➡ As with all tools, users must learn to use ChatGPT and be aware of its weaknesses.

Policy makers are finally focusing on quality and compliance. At Ella, we have been doing this for 5 years: Our AI tools should meet the highest ethical criteria and uphold the rights and interests of our users. Therefore, we have proactively implemented robust measures in the development of our AI products. These measures include the deliberate data selection and cleansing, as well as our fact-checking and correction system.

The proposed EU’s AI Act reinforces our existing commitments. The AI Act encourages the adoption of responsible AI practices which we have been championing from the start. We appreciate the EU’s intent to establish a regulatory framework for artificial intelligence. Because when it comes to implementing responsible AI practices, we see a need for improvement – particularly in the SME sector.

Furthermore, we believe a balance between fostering innovation and ensuring the responsible use of AI is crucial. We recognize the need for regulatory guidelines and through them, we expect competition to be fair and innovative, based on fundamental democratic rights.

We will be closely monitoring the development and evolution of the AI Act, ensuring that our AI tools align with the highest quality standards and comply with the regulations that will ultimately be enacted. Our goal is to anticipate and comply with future regulations.