By Walter Parker, Building Kentucky
AI is everywhere. Art and memes generated by AI are filling social media feeds. It’s in your browsers and search engines. Schools are even wrestling with AI’s ability to produce convincing research papers and quickly tackle mountains of homework sidestepping the education goals of the class.
Have you thought about how to use AI for your business? We’ve compiled a quick list of 7 pointers for you to keep in mind as you get started exploring what AI tools can do for you. This list is by no means exhaustive, but a starting point for those looking write their first prompts.
Ideation
Let’s say you wanted to make several quick mockups of a graphic based around a certain theme, incorporating various elements. Like “material design logos featuring a greyhound silhouette and a warm 4 color palate.” Or create a list of topics and post ideas as starting points for a month’s worth of social media content – “Create a social media calendar featuring posts across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn for my business. I want the post frequency to be 3-5 posts a week for each account. Post ideas should align with this month’s campaign objectives, and speak to these elements of what makes my business special to my audience. Also, provide graphic, video, and editorial suggestions for each post that I can request from my company’s editorial and graphics teams.” Suddenly, a blank calendar looks a lot less blank. Now you can look at the output, see what’s on target and what’s off the wall, and build out your content for real with a template matching your request.
Research tools
You’ve got a new project, but don’t know where to start. You think “Maybe I should check out what other people have done for inspiration.” You can have an AI chatbot like ChatGPT to show what a list of people or companies have shared related to your project. “Show me what widgets Company A, Company B and Company C have launched this year that match the description of my company’s proposed widget.” Or “Show me the links to the top 10 most viewed college commencement speeches on Youtube, and share thoughts on why each speech was noteworthy.” Hours of web searches to get things started turn into a few minutes of fact-checking and supplemental searching.
Streamline tedium
Transcribing audio files into captions or scripts? There’s an AI tool for that. Upscaling a small, pixelated photo a client sent you? There’s an AI tool for that. Removing vocal fillers and pauses from an audio or video file? There’s an AI tool for that. Need to edit, uh, *checks notes* a blog post or a newsletter? There’s an AI tool for that.
Don’t hide – show your work with AI
It’s obvious that the conversation about AI tools and academia is going to be a tough one to resolve in the long-term, but the same questions don’t stop in school. If you use AI tools to help draft proposals or conduct market research, make sure all the necessary collaborators and stakeholders know about it. How effectively we use these tools will become a mark of professionalism, and showing your work will increase your clients’ trust in your ability to use the tools ethically and creatively. On that note…
Don’t take research results as the Gospel truth
An AI’s knowledge is limited by the data it’s been fed. For example, the free version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chat bot based on GPT 3.5 is limited to information as recent as September of 2021. It’s also prone to producing factually inaccurate results – always verify critical information you receive from AI tools.
Be aware of the sources – Don’t use this for final work
For creative work especially, consider AI another tool or an aid in your work, not a machine to produce completed pieces. One simple reason is the datasets used to teach these AI language models can often include works owned by others. It’s a whole thing. So use AI mockups as just that – mockups. Conversation starters and inspiration to launch real human work toward a complete final product.
Share your experience!
People are finding new and unique ways to leverage AI in their work. Now is a great time to be on the bleeding edge of innovation and to be a part of the next shift in how we live and work. Talk about your experiences and get the conversation started in your network – how have you used AI to benefit your work? Have you thought of something clever others may not have considered? What lessons have you learned in your research? Let us know! We want to share your success stories.
