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.
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