AI and automation have become game changers across every industry. No matter what you do for a career, you're going to need to figure out how to introduce their capabilities or find yourself falling behind those that can. This week, I'll take a look at some of the things you can do to integrate AI into your normal workflows.

Before we look at the capabilities of AI, let's talk about data privacy. Unless the company you work for is paying for the enterprise version of whatever AI you are using, you should only submit information that is deemed public. If there is any question about whether you should submit the information to the AI tools, you should consult the appropriate departments at your company. There are many example instances where company secrets were leaked by someone unfamiliar with how these AI services worked. Don't let that be you.

The other key thing that you need to be aware of when it comes to AI is the concept of hallucinations. In terms of AI, a hallucination is when the AI generates something that seems plausible but may not be factually correct. This stems from the basis of how these AIs work. When an AI generates an answer, it is just putting words together based on the likelihood that they would appear in that order. While this often leads to useful information, it can occasionally generate incorrect information. You should not implicitly trust the results of the AI without some level of verification.

In spite of all of that, AIs are still a valuable tool across many different roles.

Researching. One of the best uses of an AI chatbot is to be able to ask simple questions and receive in-dept responses. When using a traditional search engine, you likely have to look across multiple entries in the result to glean the information that is provided by a single chatbot query. And the real power comes when you ask deeper or clarifying questions about aspects of the response; it's this interactive chat capability that makes the AI really shine. Just be aware that if you do use a chatbot for research, you should also tell it to cite sources to make it easier to validate that the information comes from a credible source and reduce the chances of falling for hallucinations.

Summarizing. If any part of your job involves reading lengthy websites or large online documents, there are AIs that can summarize those contents for you. Once the summary has been created, you can even ask follow-up questions about the document to dive deeper into specific aspects that most interest you. This doesn't replace the need to read them, but it can help you prioritize which portions to read in depth or which provides the information you might be looking for.

Transcribing and Meeting Notes. There are specialized AIs that can extract information from a recording. They can create a transcript including identifying unique speakers. Additionally, they can summarize and provide meeting notes and summaries including calling out action items that were identified as part of the meeting. Some AIs even provide insights into how you sounded during the meeting; did you come across as confident or was the audience confused by what you said? This type of feedback can help your reformulate your ideas to be more compelling.

Writing. One of the things that these AIs excel at is writing. Many of the modern AIs are what are considered LLMs - Large Language Models. These AIs have been trained on how language is constructed. You can easily turn bullet points and vague ideas into complete paragraphs. I don't recommend just copying and pasting the generated results, but it's much easier to edit a response than it is to start with a blank page. Even episodes of Managing A Career start with a brainstorming session with an AI. I use the results as inspiration, but every episode is my own creation.

Images and Video. Much like writing, there are specialist AIs that can take a few sentences and generate graphical results such as images and video. And just like writing, I would not just take the results verbatim, but using the AI results as inspiration can kick-start the creative process.

Specialty AIs. There are also many specialty AIs that have been trained on information specific to an industry. There are tools that focus on the medical field that can help with diagnosis or treatment or even in reading medical images. There are tools for the financial industry that can recommend investments based on a persons risk tolerance and investment goals. And one of the more popular areas for specialty AI is for the software development industry where AIs are able to write large portions of the code needed to run businesses. But, regardless of the industry, it's important to remember that these AI tools are still imperfect and you need to use your expertise and knowledge to vet any answer.

Custom AIs. The final type of AI is one that is custom built for your needs. This requires more technical skill than the others, but it has the highest potential for benefit. This may require the assistance of I/T and clearance from legal, but when an AI is trained on your data, it opens up more specific questions that you can ask. You could ask the AI about buying patterns of your various customers. You could ask the AI about most common solutions to customers' problems. You could ask about potential design ideas and how customers would react to them.

Automation. Once you have a custom AI built that understands your business processes and data, it opens up the possibility of automation using AI agents. These types of agents allow you to delegate tasks to a virtual assistant giving you more free time to work on more strategic activities. For instance, if you regularly respond to customer emails, you can have an AI agent author drafts for your final review before sending. Or if the AI understands how you onboard customers, you can let the AI agent begin the process while you just provide oversight to ensure accuracy and interject a human touch when needed.

There is a lot of worry by the world at large that AIs are going to put people out of a job, but in reality, they are just a tool like any other. Tools like a powered saw allow you to cut wood more efficiently, but there are still people that cut the wood. Treat AI, like an assistant that you can delegate lower level tasks to freeing you up to concentrate on those higher level tasks that can help you advance your career.

I would love to hear some stories of how this podcast has helped you in your pursuit of career advancement. Go to the ManagingACareer.com website and leave a message via the Contact form (https://www.managingacareer.com/contact/) or click the button to leave a voicemail via your computer. Tell me which episodes have had the biggest impact for you. If I get enough feedback, I'll start including them in upcoming episodes.

[episode artwork was generated by AI]

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