The CEO of the software company Freshworks says his employees are using OpenAI's ChatGPT to write code — and it's saving them a ton of time.
"We use ChatGPT to write code," Girish Mathrubootham told Fortune. Software development that "used to take anywhere from eight to 10 weeks… now can be done in less than a week," he said.
Generative AI's impressive coding skills are making it easier for people to develop software across the board. Some VCs and startup founders told Insider's Stephanie Palazzolo that this could disrupt the way software was created, distributed, and used.
A representative for Freshworks did not immediately respond to a request for comment made outside normal business hours.
Freshworks isn't the only example of companies using this new technology to increase productivity.
The CEO of Octopus Energy said artificial intelligence was doing the work of hundreds of people at the company. Greg Jackson wrote for The Times of London that the company had been using AI for months and that emails written by these tools delivered better customer satisfaction than those from trained workers.
Workers are also taking it upon themselves to leverage AI to increase their productivity and output behind their bosses' backs. One worker — speaking under the pseudonym Ben — told Vice that ChatGPT did around 80% of their job.
The recent popularity of AI-powered tools like ChatGPT is stoking employee fears about the automation of jobs, especially amid a wave of layoffs affecting several industries. A March report from Goldman Sachs said that generative AI tools like ChatGPT could lead to "significant disruption" in the labor market and affect around 300 million full-time jobs globally.
