The artificial intelligence revolution
Generative AI appears to be the most important technological revolution of recent years, as it may fundamentally change the way we work, learn, create and consume content. Globes dives into the artificial intelligence industry in a series of articles about the technology that until recently sounded futuristic: where algorithms and humans can collaborate, what will be the impact of AI on the economy and everyday life and what are the dangers that should be protected against
The generators of creative artificial intelligence today perform everyday tasks such as writing text, software code, design, providing customer service and selling products. But can they also establish a startup from scratch? Globes examined, in collaboration with Dror Gil, an expert in the field of artificial intelligence, whether this technology can replace the basic processes involved in establishing and managing a company.
We examined this question with the open tools launched by artificial intelligence giants such as the chat bot ChatGPT and the image generator Midjourney to try and start a company in the shortest possible time. We did not register it in the company register and did not sell products or services in order not to cause distress to customers, but we focused on as many processes as possible in building the company. The result: in a little over an hour we were able to find a good idea for a startup, prepare a business plan for it, write software code for it, draft job ads, filter resumes, find business partners and customers, set up a website, launch a marketing campaign – and finally even find suitable buyers for the company .
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Code development from scratch
Before we got to work, we asked ChatGPT how to start a company. We received a detailed explanation of the important steps, and approached the first of them: finding an idea. The bot offered us a variety of topics, some of which are trends that have passed, such as an application that connects farmers with food producers and consumers, a food kit delivery service for preparing home dishes, or a virtual reality platform for virtual meetings.
But then we asked to challenge the bot, and we were looking for more innovative ideas, that would solve bigger problems and also be able to earn more. We received ideas that themselves make use of artificial intelligence and chose one that seems relatively simple to implement: “a platform that uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing to improve and accelerate the analysis and control of legal documents” – a company that will allow law firms or accounting firms to scan documents and extract insights, summaries from them or locate them holes and contradictions. From the selection of names he suggested to us, such as LexAI or CaseCracker – we chose the name ContractIQ. The bot, it should be noted, did not bother to verify the existence of companies with a similar name, or the availability of domains to register websites for the company. Thus, despite the creativity he demonstrated, he also repeated existing names in the market.
Dror Gil, artificial intelligence expert, former CTO of Beamr / photo: Eyal Yitzhar
Next, we asked the bot what business model we should adopt. The proposals we received were in line with the idea behind the company and included a model for businesses to pay a monthly subscription for the analysis of legal documents, or a licensing model that allows other companies to offer the technology as part of the service they provide to other clients. When we chose the business subscription model, we received a proposal for four pricing tracks for four customer groups and with different complementary products. When we examined the licensing model, we received a series of proposals for partners such as law firms, accounting firms, and consulting companies. But the list of potential clients was generic and included mainly the big names in the field.
The mission: recruiting investors
After formulating the idea, we moved to the fundraising stage. We asked the bot to formulate a summary for investors based on the market analysis. The result was rather lukewarm. The bot seems to have been based on general and existing examples, and mostly self-important with increased use of phrases like “artificial intelligence”, “natural language processing”, and “machine learning”. The analysis was not in-depth and did not include real-time data on the market. Still, a typical investor probably wouldn’t think he was drafted by a machine.
The big surprise came from the worlds of human resources. The Open AI bot excelled in formulating a plan for hiring employees (probably due to familiarity with the structure of companies specializing in artificial intelligence), in writing an accurate job for example for the position of VP of Technology, including a full understanding of the skills and knowledge required for the position.
The bot performed the next step, filtering resumes from a pool we extracted from LinkedIn with distinction. He even provided good recommendations as to what questions to ask candidates, the desired salary range for various positions, and recommended bonuses and related conditions.
Partial success was recorded in the software development phase. First, we asked the chat to specify the desired product architecture. He explained that we need to build an easy and intuitive user interface for uploading documents; to develop an engine that will know how to identify parts of legal contracts; combine options for joint work on the contracts; Export statistical data and integrate information security features and integration with legal databases and document management systems.
When we asked for an expansion on the “artificial intelligence engine” section, we received a detailed answer with all the necessary capabilities: information extracts from paragraphs and documents, sentiment analysis, language support and the inclusion of computer learning models over time.
Next we asked the bot to develop the system it had just detailed. For some of the product’s features we asked for the code in the Python language – and it did not disappoint. Dror Gil, who participated in the experiment: “The bot knew how to import code at a relatively high level from the correct libraries. It made it possible to go feature by feature with it and build the product.” According to him, the chat is still far from developing a mature product and it has quite a few mistakes, and it is still “more efficient to change and fix code than to write it from scratch”.
Is it a bot or a copywriter?
Now that there is already a product, we asked to draft marketing texts for it. The bot also passed this stage with flying colours. He drafted a product page, the home page and “about the company” in a somewhat template way, but not very different from what you usually see on such sites. When we asked him to write an entertaining post about challenges facing legal experts, he did a pretty decent job, and when we asked him to draft 10 ads for Twitter and LinkedIn, we could barely distinguish his work from that of ordinary copywriters.
Later we uploaded pictures from the Midjourney generator. We used an image generator that produces face images of people who don’t exist in reality using artificial intelligence. The “Dorbal” service does indeed create a basic and graphically limited website, but provides the goods for an initial concept and even entitles you to a free domain.
“Perhaps the bot is not yet ready to start a company from scratch, but we have proven that it can be an active player in many of the steps involved in starting a company such as hiring, development and marketing,” concludes Gil, who until recently served as VP at the video compression company Bimmer. “The bot helped us think on ideas we hadn’t thought of and sped up some of the tasks we had to do. It’s not perfect, but it provides a good start that can be fixed, tuned or edited. In an era of cutbacks, where everyone is looking to do more with less, companies and employees must upgrade themselves by using these tools.”