In the first weeks after OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public in 2022, Anton Pavlovsky, the chief executive of the Ukrainian edtech startup Headway, was wary of the artificial-intelligence hype.
He decided his then-three-year-old company should adopt a defensive strategy, letting other companies take the lead in generative-AI investments, and reaping the benefits afterward, should they indeed come.
But a business trip to Silicon Valley the following April completely changed Pavlovsky’s thinking.
“I talked with so many very smart people with lots of experience, and those people said that this is definitely a paradigm shift,” Pavlovsky said. “They said that it’s akin to the internet, the world wide web, then the smartphone, and then AI.”
On his return, he implemented a companywide, four-month, hardcore focus on AI. The company also created a separate cross-functional team to help integrate AI-powered features into its various products.
Pavlovsky said the use of AI tools has made a profound difference to …