Knowledge Friction and GPT

As a futurist, I am always reading with an eye on how the information I am consuming might have an impact on the future.  Last week, my colleague, Ashok Krish, the Global Head of Digital Workforce at TCS, wrote, "Generative AI tools have the potential to provide expert knowledge to employees who may not have specialized training in a specific area."  That got my attention.  Will GPT and other LLM (large language model AI systems) enable many more of us to have access to expert knowledge?  If generalists were soon to have the power of easy and constant access to expert knowledge, how might that change the world?

With that question in mind, I took a deeper dive into understanding the concept of knowledge friction, its impact on businesses, and the steps organizations can take to ensure all their team members have access to expert knowledge via AI tools of all kinds.

Knowledge friction in business refers to the barriers, inefficiencies, or difficulties in accessing, sharing, and using knowledge. In the context of business, knowledge friction can influence market dynamics by creating information asymmetry and affecting competition. In other words, what you don't know can hurt you.  Think about the process of buying a used car from a private party.  If the seller knows there is damage to the vehicle, and the buyer does not - that would be an example of knowledge asymmetry.  

If there is knowledge friction inside a business, and useful knowledge is not available or distributed where it is most needed, that is a major problem.  LLM solutions like GPT have the ability to distribute the accumulated knowledge of the world to just about everyone.  LLM's are not perfect, but they are the best source of the world's knowledge ever known to man.  Any organization that resists access to this knowledge, and purposely creates friction to prevent access to knowledge will soon find themselves at a severe disadvantage.

Reducing knowledge friction and improving access to knowledge through advanced AI systems like GPT can yield several benefits for individual enterprises, including enhanced decision-making, increased efficiency, improved innovation and problem-solving, customized customer experiences, enhanced human capital development, better knowledge sharing and collaboration, reduced costs, better risk management and compliance, and a competitive advantage.

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Kevin Benedict

Futurist at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.