Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | March 6, 2023 | Worcester Business Journal 27 By Michelle Drolet Michelle Drolet is CEO of Towerwall, a cybersecurity services firm based in Framingham. Reach her at michelled@ towerwall.com and 774-204-0700. Editor's Note: All the text in bold below was written by the ChatGPT artificial intelligence. Those sections were verified as accurate by a human editor, but they have not been changed. 10) ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI, a research organization dedicated to creating and promoting friendly artificial intel- ligence (AI). Free for now, it reached 100 million active users in two months. 9) It uses a deep neural network architecture called Transformer, which has revolutionized the field of Natural Language Processing. Must be serious. Microsoft invested $10 billion in the project. 8) ChatGPT is a conversational AI that can answer questions, generate text, summarize articles, translate languages, compose song lyrics and other content. It can draft legal documents, write Shakespearean sonnets, and even jokes. 7) ChatGPT is trained on a large corpus of text data collected before 2021, allowing it to gener- ate human-like responses to various prompts. 6) It has been fine-tuned for specific tasks, such as question-answering, conversation, and lan- guage translation. CNN reported ChatGPT could pass the U.S. Medical Licensing exam. 5) The model is highly scalable, meaning it can be fine-tuned further to meet specific needs. Bad actors are using it to create mutations of mal- ware code difficult to block. And to draft phishing emails in perfect English. 4) ChatGPT can be integrated with other technologies, such as chatbots and virtual as- sistants, to enhance the user experience. It can be used like a search engine. It may disrupt Google. 3) Despite its impressive performance, it is im- portant to note that ChatGPT is not perfect and can still generate biased or incorrect responses. It wrote, "It takes 9 women 1 month to make a baby." It has trouble with math. 2) OpenAI has made the model available to developers and researchers through its API, making it accessible to a wide range of users. The hope is it's beneficial to society but school officials, artists, and cybersecurity pros beg to differ. 1) It may be the greatest advancement since the smartphone. As AI continues to advance, it is likely that the capabilities of language models like ChatGPT will expand. K N O W H O W e office is not just a physical place. It's a state of mind! O ne day, an employee just doesn't return from vacation, never to be heard from again. Phone calls go unanswered, and the team member ghosts supervisors and co-workers. They may have even removed belongings from their workspace. It's called job abandonment, and it happens more often in shift work. In addition to causing concern for their welfare, from an HR standpoint, it calls for careful handling in case of litigation. What happens next? Investigate thoroughly, advise Akshay Sachdeva and Gustav Anderson. Call and email the employee to see if they intend to return to work. Document all attempts. "Make a second and third attempt after waiting for 24 hours or try to get in touch with the employee's emergency contact," they write at Workforce.com. "Make as many attempts as necessary to contact the employee until they have been absent for the minimum number of days constituting job abandonment as defined by your company policy." The next step is a letter to their home, then a termination letter, then check with payroll so they get all money owed to them. Be ready. In addition to cross- training and planning schedules far in advance, have a network of on-call employees. The Indeed Editorial Team gives these tips to establish a job abandonment policy: Have a minimum number of consecutive days where an employee is considering to have abandoned their job (typically three); give specific scenarios – for instance, if an employee is on sick leave and then does not show up for work after failing to file paperwork for short-term disability, it is considered job abandonment; and state the notification employees will receive. Make it better to stay. Ways to potentially circumvent job abandonment, according to Zippa's Caitlin Mazur? Offer fair pay, vacation time, and medical leave. "Medical issues are part of life, and emergencies can pop up without warning," says Mazur. "Oen, people have no choice but to abandon their job in order to maintain their health." 10 THINGS I know about... ... ChatGPT J O B A B A N D O N M E N T BY SUSAN SHALHOUB Special to WBJ Mark Agostinelli is executive vice president for Marlborough staffing agency The DAVIS Cos. Reach him at magostinelli@daviscos.com. BY MARK AGOSTINELLI Special to the WBJ T he coronavirus pandemic brought about an immediate shi to working from home, and it was fantastic. Commutes were gone, more time was spent with family, chores were done more effectively. e list goes on. What I loved about this forced social experiment is it proved to employers remote work can still be productive for the business and flexibility to work from home can be beneficial for the employee. at said, over the longer term, professionals will suffer from not spending most of their time in an office. Many of us loved the flexibility because we had spent years grinding, immersed in our businesses, and a breath of fresh air felt great. However, we quickly forgot how much we gain from being in the office with our peers. I have grade-school kids right now. Should I have a recent college graduate at home one day, one of my main pieces of advice while they embark on their career journey would be to find a mentor in a manager and be in the office with that person as much as possible! My career progression, as well as those I look up to, is a direct result of being in an environment where spontaneity creates collaboration, where distractions can be limited and where relationships with my colleagues can thrive and mature. Furthermore, we all have bad days, and they're much easier to deal with when you aren't isolated. I know my morale is much higher when I'm problem solving in-person than alone or over a Zoom meeting! If your career is something you prioritize (as it's up there with your family, religion, health), how can you not immerse yourself in this learning environment? And for those on the back nine of their careers, I'd argue there is still much to learn, especially from recent college graduates. But beyond that, and perhaps more importantly: Who is going to give back in the same way someone did for you? In summary, use technology and the flexibility to work from home when the furnace needs to be serviced or you need to get a kid off the bus. Don't make working from home the norm. is mindset will bring more fulfillment to your career, as well as those around you! W W W

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