Generative AI and NLP: Beyond the Headlines

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Artificial Intelligence   Knowledge Management  

If you’re like me, a person who makes part of their living by creating written content, then the letters NLP may be viewed as a real threat. It stands for natural language processing, and put simply, it’s what allows generative AI to sound like a human. That is, it provides the ability for AI responses to be provided in plain language rather than simply data sets or technical terms that don’t mean anything to anyone.

The advantage of NLP is that it makes AI easier to interact with—it feels more like talking to someone rather than querying a database. The disadvantage for people like me is that it represents a threat to our livelihoods. There will come a time that GenAI and NLP will be able to produce content that is at least as good as anything that I can produce, but it can do it more cost effectively, and likely with less work for the editor.

However, if I’m honest, I’m not that worried. I don’t think that the technology will be able to replace me for a while, but I do see some aspects of NLP that can be tremendously beneficial in the workplace—and especially in project environments. They aren’t headline grabbers because they aren’t as dramatic as replacing people with AI, but they do have the potential to help organizations right now.

Eliminate the barriers to understanding
For years, I have been …

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