Unlocking Success with AI: Ohio Startups Share Insights on Leveraging ChatGPT and Generative AI

ChatGPT and similar programs have been all over the news in recent months for their implications on the tech world, but companies have already been utilizing AI for years to take their businesses to the next level.

While we are still in the early stages of understanding the broad impact generative AI will have across industries and the advancements it will bring about, we asked a variety of Ohio founders, CEOs, and tech insiders how entrepreneurs can leverage AI to drive measurable growth, improve workflow, and where the future of this technology is headed.

How can ChatGPT and other generative AI help startup founders and entrepreneurs gain an edge over competitors?

“Generative AI is poised to become a force multiplier, allowing experts to rapidly summarize, diagram, or illustrate their work. Code suggestion aides stand to improve programming efficiency and accuracy in all aspects of software development. Whether answering email, writing a professional document, or even providing training summaries for new hires, generative AI will allow founders and entrepreneurs to do more, with less, at scale.”

— Mike Ausserer, Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis Branch Lead at Infinity Labs

“We see a lot of potential in GPT technology! Being able to automate more and more allows our clients to put their efforts to other challenges, setting them apart in their industry. This can be in content creation and analytics of large amounts of data. We see generative AI enabling extremely powerful user interfaces that will enable advanced computing tasks for the general public and greatly accelerate the way we work today. Startups and founders can use these tools as part of the technology of their products and also to speed them up during the iteration of their business models.”

— Jeremy Jarrett, President of Kinetic Vision

“ChatGPT is very good at summarizing large amounts of information in a human-readable way. It makes sense as a component in novel human-machine interfaces, for error-tolerant applications. It also makes sense as a step in creative processes, to get ideas for new content through conversation with a knowledgeable source before deeper research.”

— Dennis Andersh, President and CEO of Parallax Advanced Research

What role does AI play in your industry, and what’s your advice on leveraging that role for entrepreneurs entering the same field?

“All facets of the tech industry — business development, marketing, project execution, business analytics, and training to name a few — are ripe for improvement with considered application of generative AI. I’d advise entrepreneurs entering the industry to consider AI expertise a critical part of their business plan and to strategize where emerging AI capabilities can best benefit their needs. For those considering entering the AI development market, it’s not too late! The market is still awash with rapid and diverse innovation, and though several early leaders recently grabbed headlines, new concepts, capabilities, and models emerge daily to excite the community and expand the art of the possible.”

— Mike Ausserer, Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis Branch Lead at Infinity Labs

“As a technology consulting firm, AI is becoming larger and larger as staples in our industry. Our customers are asking us to help integrate AI into their businesses, and we are also using it to accelerate our own business needs. Entrepreneurs can move much faster if they understand and use the partner ecosystems that are available to them. Early-stage businesses can qualify for pre-investment accelerator programs that are becoming more and more popular. Core technology companies NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Amazon also offer startup programs that can provide access to computing and business resources to entrepreneurs at great discounts.”

— Jeremy Jarrett, President of Kinetic Vision

“Specifically in the gaming space, AI will soon be able to generate entire virtual environments simply based on the user’s description, taking months, if not years, off the environmental development of gaming worlds. There are also some promising developments in AI-generated code. However, I think we are still a long way off from AI being able to structure an application or a game. I think we will soon see games and experiences that can generate stories and environments on demand for the user, simply by taking cues and inputs, making expansive and endlessly replayable worlds tailored to the individual.”

— Colin Rose, Co-owner and Co-founder of Objective Reality Games

“Parallax’s AI and Autonomy team provides custom solutions to hard problems involving the use of AI for the autonomous processing of data. This group creates novel AI algorithms while working with both real-world and model and simulation data. Our meta-cognitive approaches mirror real-world cognition and lend themselves to explainability, robustness, and context awareness. These approaches are grounded in the problems we solve, such as airborne combat operations, contracts data processing, and safety-assured satellite docking. Furthermore, most of our money comes from defense, and finding new AI solutions is important to maintaining technological advantage there.”

— Dennis Andersh, President and CEO of Parallax Advanced Research

How can AI, both generative and other types, help drive measurable growth for startups? 

“Startups tend to be resource constrained, especially in terms of manpower. Generative AI could enable individuals to accomplish a greater quantity of work more quickly, with consistent or even improved quality. AI could allow critical personnel with deep technical expertise the flexibility to address (with AI assistance) other business needs, like marketing and analytics, allowing a single team member to fill multiple roles with ease.”

— Mike Ausserer, Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis Branch Lead at Infinity Labs

“With an ever-growing list of plugins and tools that provide support, AI can offer startups the lift they need to get their business running on minimal resources. New tools are being integrated into ChatGPT each day, and this will continue to grow as time goes on. A new company can stay focused on decision-making and problem-solving instead of common workflows like sales responses and product inquiries.”

— Jeremy Jarrett, President of Kinetic Vision

“For a SaaS company like ours, I think the best way to measure growth is through our key metrics. By tasking AI to follow up with and engage with customers in a realistic way, it can help keep the user as an active customer who feels heard and respected and will help to reduce churn and increase add-on purchases that will return month over month. At the same time, we have to make sure the AI will behave in the way we intend in order to not alienate our customers.”

— Colin Rose, Co-owner and Co-founder of Objective Reality Games

What do you envision for the future of AI platforms? How do you think generative AI will be used in the future as the technology advances and expands?

“Prior to the advent of Singularity — where artificial general intelligence maintains, adapts, and grows itself without human input — I think we’ll see streamable intelligence-as-a-service amplifying everyday tasks and helping us decide what to wear, what to eat, and changing the way we interface with technology, the world, and each other. Although many software services already do use one or more of these, AI will adapt to the individual, learn over time, and even predict needs before the user consciously knows what they want. More importantly, AI will break down communication barriers, allowing experts and novices to communicate across industries. AI will enable people to share their ideas to an ever-widening audience, putting a new elbow in the exponential curve of technological advancement. I don’t consider it hyperbole to say that AI will change everything.”

— Mike Ausserer, Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis Branch Lead at Infinity Labs

“Honestly, we predict that GPT technology will be integrated into our everyday lives for the vast majority of internet users very soon. The speed and spread of this technology is growing by the day, where the latest plugin today will be old in weeks or months — it’s growing that fast! The changes we see in how we interact with technology will be as drastic as the adoption of the internet back in the ‘90s, but on a scale we cannot imagine.”

— Jeremy Jarrett, President of Kinetic Vision

“I can say for certainty that generative AI will completely change the way we experience entertainment in the future. We will see entire games, movies, and experiences that are generated by AI. Individual adaptive experiences will be here soon, and a user will be able to speak a desired experience and instantly have AI generate that environment, characters, and gameplay. Constant improvements in cloud and edge-computing connections will also allow AI to generate experiences anywhere and on any device without the services and infrastructure required today. I think the days of buying the latest computer to keep up with the software are soon to be a thing of the past.”

— Colin Rose, Co-owner and Co-founder of Objective Reality Games

“Eventually, generative AI will be a full-fledged partner in most creative processes, with most human-generated works being partly generated by AI, with many iterations from humans to push the AI toward generating more specifically what the human partner wants. Interfaces with computer applications will become richer, with more natural human dialogue available to answer questions. As users find the technology gives them less precise and more error-prone information than the less natural interfaces provided now, more work will need to be directed toward semantically grounded systems.”

— Dennis Andersh, President and CEO of Parallax Advanced Research