What Comes to Mind
When you think of A.I., what image comes to mind? 

For me, it's definitely Doris, Bowler Hat Guy's hat, in the movie Meet the Robinsons.

That's probably not ideal! 

The short premise of this 2007 movie is a time travel adventure in which a young adventurer saves the space-time continuum and the world as we know it from an A.I. robot (Doris) gone mad with power. SPOILER ALERT: Our young hero comes face-to-face with his invention and promises to never invent it. POOF! GONE, and the world is saved!

I keep wondering if we may not have similar regrets as we seem to keep racing to keep up with the advances of A.I.

Podcast Recommendation
I've caught a few episodes of The Artificial Intelligence Show with Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput. Thanks to Ilise Benum for recommending it! I highly recommend this one!

The guys are brilliant - genius level - and are incredibly knowledgeable about current A.I., the direction it appears to be heading, and how we can best prepare ourselves for this rapidly advancing technology. They offer a number of resources on their website.  

Episode 105 of their podcast particularly struck me, prompting this post. My anxiety was fortunately tempered by listening to episode 103 and their Intro to AI for Marketers program offered monthly with a limited time replay available.  

How Will We USE A.I.?
I noted a few options that seem useful in business on a prior blog post. Such options include for research purposes, content idea generation, create a model client as a reference point, and assist creating a list of potential ideal clients. 

Paul and Mike are visionaries, and they read a lot of material to stay on top of the A.I. world. They advocate a lot of A.I. literacy needs to happen to be prepared for how rapidly A.I. tech is advancing. That seems accurate to me, so I'm at least dipping my toes into what A.I. is, how to try to master it, and spread the gospel of educating yourself. 

Current Challenges
The trick at this time is A.I. remains a bit unwieldy. You need to become darned good with your prompting skills and be prepared to keep poking A.I. tools to dig deeper to come up with material that's semi-useful yet still relies on human insight to read decently. It's also useful to use the same prompt in a few different A.I. models to see how they respond as each will produce different results. 

There is a fair amount of friction or resistance on the part of the human public to actually use A.I. tools. The current percentage using A.I. remains extremely limited. It just doesn't make sense or fit in most of our worlds to be easily used - yet. 

"Apple Intelligence" 
Apple announced in June 2024 at its Worldwide Developers Conference that "Apple Intelligence" is coming Fall 2024/spring 2025. The features described on multiple Apple platforms aim to integrate many apps and accompanying info embedded within your device to better respond to your particular queries. This will likely bring us a step closer to making A.I. more "useful" with less friction for the average person. It will simply be in your everyday use.

Google and Meta are embedding A.I. into their platforms as a feature that's simply built in and you can't remove it. There are other examples of A.I. at work that we're coming to simply expect will be there to assist us - Siri is one and Alexa is another. We also all see Office, Google Drive products, and our own phones "suggest" words and material as we type. That is A.I. at work. 

The less people need to do to A.I. to make it useful, the more quickly it will be adopted by the general public.

Job Security
After listening to podcast episode #105, and we can all see this coming, A.I. models are in the process of rapidly becoming less buggy in how they operate or even loop back on itself. Sure, there will be jobs created to oversee the output of A.I., but the number needed will be far less than the current number of employees on the job market. 

It was predicted on the podcast that current high-human roles such as physicians and lawyers will be targeted soon as something A.I. can take over in a few years.

How often do you joke you "got your degree from WebMD" as you searched the meaning of lab results or tried to compile symptoms into a disease or syndrome to "help" guide your doctor?

Haven't we all longed to have the handheld device Geordi of Star Trek uses to quickly diagnose and initiate treatments?

When sci-fi becomes real.

Paul and Mike advocate discussions begin happening soon to offset the potential sudden dramatic shift in workforce needs as a worldwide.

Wait - what?

Who's in Charge Here?
Aren't the humans in charge of the invention? Just because A.I. can do things, should it? Or does it need to? There's something of a sense that we are merely bystanders as A.I. becomes developed and it's up to us to keep up.

Plenty of concern has been raised about the use of A.I. by major super-power countries in defense. Remember the 1983 movie War Games? 

There's even a concept called "P(doom)" - "the probability of catastrophic outcomes...as a result of A.I." (Wikipedia)

Let's Step Back a Minute
My general Life philosophy is "What can I control or impact in my little corner of the world?"

I aim to trust humans will realize the benefit of humanity being involved with jobs rather than throwing everything at "digital employees." 

This sentiment is echoed by Paul and Mike at the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute. Their message is actually more hopeful than doom-and-gloom. 

Their mission is focused on education - increase A.I. literacy and help businesses develop processes, teams, and risk reduction to enable employees to use A.I. optimally to maximize human effort. 

Message of Hope
You know how none of us have enough Time or hours in the day to do the million things we'd like to do?

The idea is to focus on the tasks you do that are repetitive or that you don't like to do.

​Train an A.I. model to do those so you can focus on the human aspect needed in the job, maximizing the time and effort you put into things.

Paul has given examples of the dramatic difference A.I. has made in his team's work projects.

• He discussed the effort needed to put their weekly podcast together. What could take at least 50 hours to produce, they've gotten down to more like 10 hours with the assistance of A.I. services.
  
• He offers a similar example in his recent effort to create an online education program. As a former marketer, what would have taken at least 50 hours of skilled time to summarize the program (easily a $1,000 job) took approximately 20 minutes. Wow! He was then able to focus his energy on  other activities to promote the new program or answer emails or any number of things only he could accomplish. 

Paul sees A.I. as a way to "democratize" knowledge and skills - all of us having tools readily accessible to share our message with others.

What Makes YOU Unique?
As a hospital physical therapist, we have been challenged for years to identify how we differ from nursing, an aide, or a family member walking around a unit with a patient. 

What can YOU offer that only you can do? 

That is the crux of A.I.

Consider it a tool - a helpmate - a partner. (that's far less scary than trying to take over the world, right?)

• Let it summarize information for you.
• Let it help you brainstorm ideas.
• Let it pretend to be a customer as you poke to identify pain points you can solve.
• Let it help schedule routine tasks and manage aspects of your calendar. 

Now What?
I can see future articles revolve around the topic of A.I. It IS big!

Paul Roetzer notes "A.I." has actually been around for decades at this point, but it wasn't until ChatGPT was introduced to the world as a useful tool for all in November 2023 that it really rocked everyone to take notice. 

These A.I. models are now learning rapidly and exponentially. It's here and not going away. 

If we can think of it as a helper, a tool, a digital coworker, it will still require human input, massaging, and training to be most effective and to keep learning. 

We do need to also consider the dark downside potential and keep that in check. It's up to us to be human!

While we learn more about A.I. as a helpmate, I would be happy to help you do what only you can do best. None of us have all the skills to do all the things.

I would be thrilled to partner with you to bring your vision to life - Let's Chat!

What is Generative Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)?
The most basic definition is the ability to turn input into new content. "Rather than merely analyzing data, generative AI produces new data in all forms of media – text, code, images, audio, video and more." (Fivetran - simply a definition source, not promoting the product)

So What Do I Do with It?
I've struggled to find a use for generative A.I. in my world. I've been keeping eyes and ears open for potential uses, and I think I've finally found some.

Create A Customer Avatar
I've heard this suggestion often. Feed your favorite A.I. program with cues about your customer to effectively build a model of your customer, then run blog ideas or queries through that avatar's reference point to try to find insights. This can be useful to consider your marketing plan and product options to interest your customer. This may be useful, but I haven't tried it yet. It still feels like too much work to invest the time to create. I find it's more efficient (and more human!) to comment and chat with potential clients to identify needs and pain points. 

Create A List or Pool of Potential Clients
Now we're talking! This idea got my attention. Ilise Benum has been studying and perfecting prompts to help business owners tap into finding clients to begin reaching out with brief "letters of introduction" as Jennifer Goforth Gregory calls them. I'm looking forward to Ilise cutting the learning curve for me in a class over the summer.

Improve Writing Productivity
Jennifer Goforth Gregory offers a self-study program to learn ways to use A.I. in your research efforts and writing posts, headlines, even social media posts. She includes a module on ethical use of A.I. in your work. I haven't put in the time to learn how to create cues to use A.I. this way yet. I also see mixed news about whether use of A.I. is really allowed in some situations or how we need to qualify the end product if A.I. is used. This feels a bit murky and evolving to me to invest time in just yet.

Day-to-Day Usage - Ease of the Mundane
I heard a brilliant suggestion recently - call on A.I. to calculate how to halve a recipe for you. Amazing! That's a use I can get behind to save me some math gymnastics! 

Another suggestion was to present your A.I. program with a list of tasks and ask for assistance to prioritize the items to plan your day. This can be especially useful if prioritizing is hard. (h/t to a podcast interview on The Deliberate Freelancer with Rachel Meltzer)

Which Program to Use?
I'm afraid this is an evolving response that's too hard to pin down. On a general search, I found as many as 15 options listed, and it doesn't include an option I aim to test out as recommended by Ilise Benum. The best bet here is use a search engine and track ratings by others for ease of use and effectiveness. 

How have you been using generative A.I. in your work or personal life? What's your favorite program?

Read. Write. Engage. is an all-human platform with only general search engines used for research. Let's Chat if you're looking for a friendly, spontaneous human to collaborate with!