Crushbank co-founder and chief technology officer David Tan believes companies in the channel should leverage the benefits of ChatGPT instead of turning a blind eye to it.

“Any MSP should be looking at it and using the language capabilities today in interesting and diverse ways,” he told CRN. “This way they can start to understand what the technology does, the limitations and the opportunities.’

Tan is no stranger to artificial intelligence. In fact, he welcomes it.

“I have a computer science background, I started as a developer,” he said. “I just started playing with AI when the technology came along using my coding background.”

As he now heads up Syosset, New York-based software vendor Crushbank, he’s built AI products on IBM Watson, Microsoft Azure and OpenAI. But now, he’s working with ChatGPT to leverage AI for the channel.

“The OpenAI piece is something that we’re testing right now, building full-blown chatbots essentially the same way ChatGPT works,” he said. “Your customers can start asking questions like, ‘I just got a new iPhone, how do I set it up?’”

While still in its infancy, ChatGPT has sparked many conversations in the channel with some saying it’s a hacker’s dream and others leveraging the AI platform for their business.

Tan sees both the benefits and the pitfalls of the platform, most notably bias.

“At the end of the day, it’s still a machine. It still has to be programmed and managed and controlled by humans,” he said. “But I am concerned about, point blank, white males training the system that will make the content more specific to white males, or Americans will make it more specific to America.”

But those pitfalls can be managed, he said.

Check out what the tech guru said about ChatGPT, its downsides, its upsides and why everyone in the channel should be leveraging it.