My LinkedIn feed was buzzing with all sorts of AI content this month. I guess that will be our new normal.
My go-to video expert, Lou Bortone, was at the giant INBOUND conference sponsored by HubSpot, and he posted that most of the sessions were on AI and how it would impact digital marketing.
It seems like we should have more to talk about than just this technology, but it’s new(ish) and shiny, so everybody keeps talking about it.
Using AI daily
My friend Lorraine Minister has integrated various AI programs into her daily workflow. She shared this on LinkedIn recently.
Up until reading her post, I hadn’t used AI for anything, and It actually sparked me to have my first interaction with perpelxity.ai when I was stuck thinking about topics for this blog. What I like about this program is it cites its sources, which for me is just as helpful as the draft text it creates. You don’t need to create an account to ask it a question. Give it a try!
Forrester takes a strong stance
Forrester took a strong stance on companies embracing AI immediately. In “The GenAI Imperative” the CEO of Forrester, George Colony, writes:
In Forrester’s 40 years, we’ve rarely recommended that clients move immediately to build a new technology. We typically counsel cautious experimentation until the tech matures and the vendor landscape rationalizes.
We’re breaking that rule with generative artificial intelligence (genAI). We believe that you must move NOW.
I do recommend reading the full article.
Boston Consulting Group tests AI with consultants
How will AI be integrated into the way consultants work and will it be beneficial? In “Centaurs and Cyborgs on the Jagged Frontier” Ethan Mollick writes:
A lot of people have been asking if AI is really a big deal for the future of work. We have a new paper that strongly suggests the answer is YES.
For the last several months, I have been part of a team of social scientists working with Boston Consulting Group, turning their offices into the largest pre-registered experiment on the future of professional work in our AI-haunted age. Our first working paper is out today. There is a ton of important and useful nuance in the paper but let me tell you the headline first: for 18 different tasks selected to be realistic samples of the kinds of work done at an elite consulting company, consultants using ChatGPT-4 outperformed those who did not, by a lot. On every dimension. Every way we measured performance.
This was a fascinating read that I found via Amy Tobin on LinkedIn. As someone who has worked for many of the big consulting firms, it definitely got my attention.
Mercer stresses safety
With all technology advances come risks. I was glad to see Mercer posting a framework for saner AI adoption. In “How do firms safely activate generative AI” the authors begin:
Many studies over the past few months have consistently shown that generative AI promises productivity gains. The crucial question that emerges now as we move past the discussion of its economic potential is, “How do we safely activate?”
Firms must make a mental shift that generative AI is no longer just another IT project that is limited to and controlled by the IT department. It would require a firm-wide commitment to AI literacy, reskilling, and resource redeployment with people-centric guard rails.
They then walk readers through a generative AI deployment framework that they suggest.
ChatGPT adds image functionality
One of the leaders in AI technology had a big announcement this month. I saw this in LinkedIn news – ChatGPT gets an image generator:
ChatGPT now has the ability to produce custom images, not just text. OpenAI, the company behind the popular chatbot, unveiled a new version of its DALL-E image generator Wednesday that will be incorporated into ChatGPT for paid users starting next month.
I think that’s enough for this month. I’d love to hear what programs you are using and what you like about them.
Photo by Joseph Hersh on Unsplash
