Moderna's CEO Says Staff Should Consult ChatGPT 20 Times a Day

OpenAI is seemingly everywhere now--its ChatGPT system is in the vanguard of bringing AI to the masses. It's also laced through the workings of pharma giant Moderna, thanks to a deal weaving OpenAI tech deeply into the fabric of the company. So much so that Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel says his staff should be making the most of the investment in AI and using it a lot.

Assuming a typical eight-hour workday, that means Bancel expects his staff to ask OpenAI's chatbots questions at least two, maybe three times every hour--an AI interaction rate that could easily, with some back-of-the-napkin estimates, eat up 10 to 15 minutes of work time each work hour. Maybe more.

So what will all that employee-AI interaction do for Moderna? The Wall Street Journal quotes Bancel saying AI is going to be used to "reinvent all of Moderna's business processes, in science, in legal, in manufacturing--everywhere."

So far, Moderna's staff have built many different custom GPTs using OpenAI's tech, the WSJ says. These are specially trained versions of the chatbot that are separate from the main ask-it-anything open-access ChatGPT system that most people have tinkered with online. Of the 750 or so custom Moderna GPTs, some are being used to help decide drug doses for clinical trials, and have presumably been trained on proprietary data from previous Moderna trials, while others have more business-specific uses, like helping Moderna deal with government regulators. 

An official statement from Moderna underlines Bancel's enthusiasm for the technology. He explained that AI is as impactful as the "introduction of the personal computer in the 1980s" which "changed the way we work and live." The goal for such widespread company adoption of AI tech is to support Moderna's "ambitious plan to launch multiple products over the next few years." 

This gives us a deeper clue as to what Bancel thinks AI can offer for his company: as a multiplier, enhancing the productivity and efficiency of his staff, in any division of the company. The company statement also quotes OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: Moderna's simply "leading the way by empowering all of its employees to use AI to tackle complex problems," he said. The WSJ says Altman also explained that right now, ChatGPT may not be used to advance Moderna's scientific progress too much, though it will be able to tackle "more and more" scientific tasks "eventually." Right now, the best way for Moderna to advance its scientific objectives is "to enhance the productivity of people and accelerate what they can do," Altman said.

What can your company do with this AI-embracing approach? Until now, it's been easy to see that content generated by AIs can boost simple business processes like building presentations or preparing marketing material, but Moderna's example shows that by embracing new technologies like custom-trained GPTs, AI could actually be used in almost every part of your business. It's just a question of working out where. If you're hesitant to embrace AI, or your staff themselves are stressed out by the tech's implications or are worried about simply using it, then maybe it's time to take some AI training for you, your management team, and your frontline staff.