It’s one thing to use ChatGPT to write email messages and articles. But now it turns out that most business letters want automated help in making decisions, judging by The Decision Dilemma, a study released Wednesday by Oracle and author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz.
The reason is that they are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data pouring in at them. Indeed, 64% of individuals and 70% of business leaders are so stressed they prefer to have a robot make their decisions.
The study highlights “how the overwhelming amount of inputs a person gets in their average day — internet searches, news alerts, unsolicited comments from friends — frequently add up to more information than the brain is configured to handle,” says Stephens-Davidowitz, the author of Everybody Lies and Don’t Trust Your Gut.
Of those polled, 86% say this barrage of data is complicating decision-making in their personal and professional lives.
Moreover, 59% face a decision dilemma more than once every single day, and this inability to decide things is having a negative impact on the quality of life for 85%. Specifically, it is causing:
On the business side, 85% have also suffered from decision distress. Often, they feel guilty about or question a decision they made in the past year. And 93% believe having the right decision intelligence can make or break their company.
That’s why 97% want more input from data to help them:
The message for email marketers is clear: You are competing for attention not only with rival brands, but with all the distractions posed by the internet and other sources. All the more reason to tighten up your messaging, subject lines — and targeting.
It’s not clear how a robot would help in the decision-making process. The user would still have to figure out which data to input. And there would have to be a rigorous follow-up.
But people want information, believing that without data, their decisions would be:
And the respondents believe that an organization that uses technology to make data-driven decisions is:
“The hesitancy, distrust, and lack of understanding of data shown by this study indicates that many people and organizations need to rethink their approach to data and decision making,” concludes T.K. Anand, executive vice president, Oracle Analytics. “What people really need is to be able to connect data to insight to decision to action.”
Oracle surveyed 14,000 employees and business leaders across 17 countries.
"It" cannot make decisions. It is simply an algorithm, which is a logic chain. Things can go wrong: 1) a flaw in the logic; 2) elements of fact turn out to not be facts (ChatGPT can deliberately lie); 3) no guarantee that the determining choice at a fork is in consort with one's morals, intentions, and boundaries.
In other words: errors and slant supplied by the designers drives the decision, so how is that an improvement over making the decision yourself?