ChatGPT, a software that tries to simulate human conversational abilities using artificial intelligence, is attracting increasing attention. It is sometimes portrayed as a groundbreaking productivity aid, including for creative and tacit-knowledge work. In this paper, we run an experiment to assess its potential for complex writing tasks, by asking the model to compose a policy brief for the Bank of Italy's Governing Board.
The results show that ChatGPT can accelerate workflows by providing well-structured content suggestions, and by producing extensive, linguistically correct text in a matter of seconds. It does, however, require a significant amount of expert supervision, which partially offsets productivity gains. If the app is used without sufficient preparation, the output may be incorrect, superficial, or irrelevant.
