ChatGPT, a software seeking to simulate human conversational abilities, is attracting increasing attention. It is sometimes portrayed as a groundbreaking productivity aid, including for creative work. In this paper, we run an experiment to assess its potential in complex writing tasks. We ask the software to compose a policy brief for the Board of the Bank of Italy. We find 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 naively, output can be incorrect, superficial, or irrelevant. Superficiality is an especially problematic limitation in the context of policy advice intended for high-level audiences.

翻译：ChatGPT，一款旨在模拟人类会话能力的软件，正吸引着越来越多的关注。它有时被描述为具有开创性的生产力提升工具，包括在创意工作领域。本文通过实验评估其在复杂写作任务中的潜力。我们要求该软件为意大利银行董事会撰写一份政策简报。研究发现，ChatGPT能够通过提供结构良好的内容建议，并在数秒内生成大量语言正确的文本，从而加速工作流程。然而，它确实需要大量的专家监督，这在一定程度上抵消了生产力的提升。如果该应用被天真地使用，其输出可能不正确、肤浅或无关。对于面向高层受众的政策建议来说，肤浅是一个尤其成问题的局限。