The potential of AI for the Average Joe

Artificial Intelligence, Sci-Fi and ChatGPT – Erica examines the potential of AI for the Average Joe.

The potential of AI in the real world

When you hear the term artificial intelligence, where does your mind go?

For a sci-fi geek like me, I go straight to the likes of Skynet from the Terminator movies, or the machine world in The Matrix franchise. Perhaps that’s me getting a little carried away!

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been researching the potential of AI in the real world, and what this means to the ‘Average Joe’, like you and me. I’m talking about the non-experts in your teams, in supporting or operational roles, who will gain huge productivity and engagement benefits from harnessing AI.

However, like anything, it all starts with mindset (how many times have I said that in my blogs!?)

AI is not just for marketing and tech experts, no matter what you read or see on LinkedIn it’s for everyone, right now, and let me tell you why…

Using AI in your organisation

First, let’s start with the most important question…

Have you had a play with it yet?

No? It’s easy. Just follow these steps.

Search on Google for the name of the AI service you’d like to try. I went with the well-known ChatGPT4. Go ahead and set up a free account and start by asking it any question.

As I was researching for a LinkedIn Learning module on this very topic, this was the first question I asked it…

“Explain how to use AI for people who are office workers in simple terms”

To which I receive a list of 7 items with a descriptor, to which I thought, ‘not a bad start, although a little long’. I then popped in the word ‘summarise’ not knowing if that was enough, however I was pleased to receive a paragraph summary of my previous answer.

How easy is that?

It’s worth flagging before you run off automating all your processes, or having AI write all your content, you need to consider digital ethics and integrity, e.g. the moral framework of using digital tools, and supporting behaviours which sit underneath this. This has an impact on key items such as data protection, social media usage, HR policies and much more.

A conversation with HR is absolutely needed. And probably an IT function with a specific AI product owner. Speak to them to understand:

What is your organisational stance on AI?
What AI services are compliant with this stance?
What type of information can be used in the AI?
What details can input into the AI and how this is quality assured by your organisation?
What is your digital more and behavioural framework which employees need to adhere to?

I’m sure there are other key items you might want to consider, but these questions are a good place to start.

You can also see what other companies are doing around this. Have a look at organisations such as Charity Digital – they have put together a framework to describe how people should be considering digital behaviours and what this means to work with technologies such as AI.

I bet there are people in your organisation already using AI for things such as:

Automating Repetitive Tasks: such as data entry or file organisation.
Document Creation: helping with tasks like design and build of policies and documents, reporting writing or compliance monitoring.
Data Analysis and Insights: processing vast amounts of data quickly and providing meaningful insights by identifying trends and predicting future outcomes.
Idea Creation: brainstorming and requesting ideas, pros and cons, text, and content.

Back to ChatGPT4…

When you ask Chat GPT4 a question, you get an answer in seconds.

As designers and deliverers of learning content, this is right up our street. Ask it to write a training module overview and you get 10 key points pop up which tend to be what you would be looking for.

You can ask it to write a L&D policy, create a report which suggests insight from key evaluation data, or draft the content for a specific budget presentation you need to deliver.

Happy days, right?

Well not everything is that rosy in the AI garden yet.

What’s missing is the humanising of the script. The examples, the storytelling, and lived experience elements are just not there. I asked it for examples and what I got back was very fact-based stats, and nothing practical, emotive, or real. AI still needs a human to bring the content to life.

But I must insist you get onto an AI service and give it a go. And our AI for the Average Joe podcast show will help you get started.

You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how it can make your life easier, and by understanding this, you will feel more confident talking to stakeholders about the possibilities.

And I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that we are still a long way from Judgement Day… 😉

Learn more about how we’re helping teams understand AI and gain the confidence and skills to embrace and enable it across their organisation.