The brains behind bots

When I first heard of ChatGPT, all I could think was, “This thing is going to replace me.” It can create content; it can edit your writing; it can even come up with headlines. That sounds an awful lot like what I do in an average day.

But when I took the plunge and started experimenting with the chatbot, I realized that while it can do a lot, it can’t do everything. It can analyze existing data, but it can’t conduct research. It can give you general gardening advice, but it doesn’t know your region and your customers’ needs. It can give you ideas for your website but it doesn’t know your brand.

Once I realized that AI is just a tool, not my replacement, I started to dig in deeper and discovered how it can help me be more efficient. It can cut down the time I spend Googling the answer to a question and help me shorten up a social media post.

I actually used ChatGPT to help come up with some of the silly sci-fi puns you’ll find in this issue and to find some AI stats. One of the industry pros we talked to in the cover story used ChatGPT during an interview. Guest columnist Lawson Thalmann even used it to co-write his piece on page 10.

It’s a wonderful tool to bounce ideas off of and brainstorm with. You can read up on some of the ways garden centers and other green industry businesses are using it to improve their workflow in our cover story on page 18.

But it will never replace the breadth and depth of knowledge you’ve cultivated about your specific area. It will never know your customers the way you do by interacting with them every day. And it will most certainly never be able to give your customers the digging-in-the-dirt experiences you can.

The rise of AI actually reminds me a bit of the panic the publishing industry experienced when news content started making its way online. People were lamenting the ‘death of print’ and writers and reporters thought they might be out of a job. It’s true — many publications went out of business (including some of the newspapers I wrote for). But as content moved online, so did content creators. The ones who embraced the change and learned how to adapt found ways to stay in business.

We’re facing a similar tipping point now. Whether we like it or not, AI is here to stay. And who knows? It just might make your job easier.