Laurent Bosseler is Digital Procurement and COE lead at UCB. He focused on making technology for colleagues at the pharma company as simple and seamless as possible.
In the latest episode of the PharmaSource podcast, he discussed how he is currently grappling with how to make the most of exciting Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology such as ChatGPT – but without exposing his company to preventable risk.
“The power of the tool is amazing” says Laurent but adds “you must keep your critical mind and don’t upload any company content there.
“The risk of a security breach is way too high. There have been a number cases in the press recently with Toyota and Samsung reporting security breaches”
“What you pump into the system could easily be leaked. The CEO of OpenAI even mentioned it himself.“
In March 2023, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he “felt awful” about leaking users’ chat histories and payment details.
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How to use ChatGPT responsibly
Laurent’s advice is to use chatbots to validate your thinking.
“ChatGPT is a gamechanger in helping the professional buyer. Use it to validate your thinking. Use it to discover new ideas, to come up with new questions for your suppliers.
If you’re not an expert in a category, it can help you write a brief for suppliers. It really has a knowledge power that no human being can have so use it wisely to enrich your thinking.”
However, he warns against uploading confidential information.
“Don’t upload anything! Be extremely cautious. Do not upload anything confidential such as a contract. Wait for your company to install a ChatGPT-like tool that is behind a firewall and has the necessary security.”
“The system is clever .Even if I say ‘I’m working in a Belgian pharma company, specialised in neurology and immunology’ but I’ve not mentioned the name, within three seconds the system will say that you work in UCB.
Intellectual property is also an important issue to address. “Very few people read the terms and condition when you join those sites, because it’s five pages but it says that everything you post is the property of OpenAI.
“I’m trying to block colleagues using ChatGPT and discussing with my IT department to see how we can have a GPT-like, way of working within UCB firewall so that you are safe to upload something.
A case study Laurent is looking at is how NLP can improve the usefulness of their intranet.
“Sharepoint is is very good for storage of document, but we are less good at removing old documents. So if you ask a question, you might find six documents which are expired but end user might not realise. A GPT would be ideal for that kind of question and could highlight all the inconsistencies between documents”
Listen to the full podcast for Laurent’s advice on procurement technology, and how to help teams who are suffering from ‘tool fatigue’.
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