It's everywhere. If you listen to the futurists, it will completely upend all industries and at all levels. How will it upend? We're not sure yet. Some speculate that the rise of AI will lead to full employment of everyone while others claim the aim is 100% unemployment with all of us replaced by the machine.
With AI invading conversations in all industries and the options to implement growing rapidly, almost everyone has their thoughts on AI. And that is to be expected. But, the interesting thing with AI, it seems everyone also has feelings about it. And these feelings can be strong even if our actions don't align with our feelings. A new study shows many Gen Z adopters are heavily utilizing AI for work while also fearing AI will replace them.
How are you feeling about AI?
When you hear "AI", what do you feel? Are you excited about the opportunities it brings? Do you imagine all the annoying tasks leaving your plate? Do you see efficiency, easier access to information, and automation of all the things? Or, are you fearful of what it means for your business, for your job, for your entire industry? Do you become anxious about what providing for your family is going to look like in 5 years? In 2 years? Next year?!
AI doesn’t care how you feel about it
If you're on the excited side of the spectrum, you're already using AI tools and working on how to integrate them into your workflows. That's great, keep it up!
If you lean toward the fearful side of the spectrum, you might need to hear some hard encouragement. Your feelings about it don't matter. No matter what the actual impact of AI ends up being in 5 years, you need to start engaging with it today. If you are in a job that can utilize AI, you will need to either figure it out or get left behind.
Continuing to avoid AI will be like trying to assemble a car with a screwdriver when an electric drill is available to you. Yes, it is possible, but you are going to be at a disadvantage compared to someone getting a more efficient, higher quality result with AI.
Where to start with AI?
If you're a reluctant adopter, let me encourage you to start small.
- Use ChatGPT to write an email. Put the idea for the email, some thoughts about the tone you want to convey, and what you hope the response to be. Then, let the bot write your first draft. Clean it up to add back some of your own style and send it on!
- Next time you have something that is a repetitive or annoying task, Google an AI solution for it (or have AI give you suggestions!). Within the last week, I've found new AI tools, or created new tools using AI, to do everything from enhance a blurry video, generate 3d print files, convert PDFs into text to feed an AI-driven legal search, and automate screen record videos for the case studies on our new website. All of these would have been much more difficult, or even just forgotten about, prior to using AI.
If you're interested in using AI for your business but not sure where to start, reach out for a casual conversation. We'd love to geek out over ideas for your business and AI.