ChatGPT’s not going to take over anytime soon, says Richard White

The ‘a’ in AI largely overshadows the ‘i’ with the technology remaining largely artificial and only a little intelligent for now, says WiseTech CEO Richard White.

The Australian’s Claire Harvey with Uber Australian managing director Dom Taylor, Shopify Asia Pacific managing director Shaun Broughton and WiseTech chief Richard White. Picture: John Feder

The “a” in AI still largely overshadows its counterpart “i” as the technology remains largely artificial and only a little bit intelligent, says the chief executive of one of Australia’s most successful technology companies.

Richard White, the founder of WiseTech Global, said that, while he was an avid user of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the technology was far from taking over the planet.

“AI is a big A, for artificial, and a really tiny I, for intelligence. So it’s not going to take over the world anytime soon,” he said.

While Mr White was sceptical regarding the accuracy of AI systems, he admitted he was a regular user of ChatGPT.

“I literally have it open on my desk. I do a lot of Teams calls and meetings and when someone will say something, (ChatGPT) gives you this incredible ability to research that, to develop things, to build things and to write things,” he told the audience at The Australian-Sky News Economic Outlook forum on Friday.

“The other reason I’m using it is because you have to lead by example, you have to dig in and understand what this technology is really about before you actually make a sensible answer.”

Artificial intelligence has the nation on the cusp of another “iPhone moment”, Mr White told journalist Claire Harvey alongside Uber managing director Dom Taylor and Shopify APAC managing director Shaun Broughton.

Shopify and Uber had similar thoughts on the adoption of newer technologies, with Uber announcing it was in the midst of embedding autonomous driving tech­nology into its platform.

Uber’s Mr Taylor said Australia was still behind other countries when it came to implementing new technologies.

“We’ve recently announced a deal with Waymo to bring the power of their autonomous technology to the Uber platform, both on delivery and mobility,” he said.

Uber, similar to Airtasker, was seeing the supply side of its business increase significantly as many Australians were seeking to make extra money during the current cost-of-living crisis, he said.

The company used the forum to announce the launch of a new product, Uber Green, in which riders could request a ride in an electric vehicle. The move forms part of a larger plan to stop onboarding petrol vehicles and to operate a zero emissions platform by 2040.

Shopify was also testing the benefits of ChatGPT among other generative AI. The growing platform now hosted more than 100,000 Australian retailers and saw 25 per cent of all e-commerce transactions through its systems, Mr Broughton said.

“Of those 100,000 retailers in Australia, we see 44 per cent of them right now investing in technology or AI,” he said.

“I think the use of ChatGPT (among other technologies will help retailer’s) own employee base work smarter.”

On the future of tech jobs, Mr White said he believed Australia had an issue to overcome, which he called the “trucks and dolls problem”.

“We still have relatively low participation rates for females in technology,” he said. “I saw statistical data recently that showed there were only 20 per cent of females graduating with technology degrees. But it’s only about 7 per cent graduating in software engineering – that’s a striking number.

“And that’s mainly a societal problem because at very young ages we’re told, ‘that’s what boys do and that’s what girls do’. I call this the trucks and dolls problem.”

The key to a more equitable ­future was education, Mr White said, adding that “equity and inclusiveness has to be thought of from top to bottom”.

Originally published as ChatGPT’s not going to take over anytime soon, says Richard White