Who's afraid of... AI
Or how to get comfortable with the unknown
I am fascinated by the narrative around AI - even more than by the technology itself.
Depending on whom you talk to it’s either the holy grail, civilization’s downfall, or completely irrelevant.
There are those who’ve embraced it wholeheartedly, optimizing everything from email sequences to LinkedIn posts, shortening research quests from months to mere weeks, converting ChatGPT (lovingly known as “Chappi” to her friends) into an extension of their own thought processes.
Others spent their time highlighting the inherent bias of LLM (large languag models), and the proprietary black-box approach of many companies using AI, warning of perpetuating existing inequality - now with a machine-issued stamp of approval.
And then there’s the group of people who don’t quite know what this is, and prefer to not pay any attention to AI at all (as difficult as this may sound if you are anywhere close to the tech industry or anyone working in tech).
If you are in the AI sceptics or the trying-to-ignore-AI group, hear me out!
I don’t want to like AI - or maybe just a little bit
To be frank: I am not a fan of changing my tech stack. I am extremely loyal to software I use (unless I hear about how they mistreat their support teams - that’s a reason to immediately switch). I love optimizing my workflows, and once it’s optimized, I’d rather not touch it again.
And yet, I have been experimenting with more tools in the past 6 months than in the previous 6 years combined.
AI is developing so freaking FAST.
How did that happen? I’ll share my story and maybe you can get excited, too.
Option 1: Find an AI adjacent project you can connect with
One of my best friends spends literal hours every day discussing thoughts and ideas with “Chappi”. They write whole fantastic theater plays including elaborate world building using AI - both to find ideas, to quickly sketch out options, and to test for consistency.
For myself, I took advantage of a summer sabbatical to invest time into the AI Mentor for Distributed Teams. As a founding member of the Remote-First Institute, I had the opportunity to work together with the product team, seeing first hand how to go from idea to MVP to a proper product in a matter of weeks.
And the result is pretty impress, so try out one module for free: AI Mentor for Distributed Teams.
Option 2: Learn the basics - connected with your area of expertise
AI can be used in many different ways. The sheer amount of options can be overwhelming, and the high-level overview articles are often unconnected to your day-to-day life. So find an angle that you are interested in anyway.
For myself, this was a quick primer on AI for Product Management, a course created by Mind The Product, Pendo and Google. Within two hours the course provides a meaningful overview on how AI can be used in and for product management. In practical terms I can now choose which rabbit hole to jump in, since I now know what to look for.
So whether you are in Product, Design, specific programming languages, or even leadership: find some resources for your niche, and learn what’s possible, and what’s on the horizon.
approach , sparking new avenues of investigations for yourself. At least you are now plunging into a rabbit hole of your own choosing.
Option 3: Follow the journey of an enthusiast
There are people in this world who love to experiment with everything. Some of them may share it in personal conversations (like my friend who creates entire universe with ChatGPT). And some turn it into public learning opportunities.
Iwo Szapar, a fellow founding member of the Remote First Institute is one of these people. He just launched the an AI challenge to Become an AI Pro in 30 Days. I won’t promise you’ll become a professional, I am sure you’ll pick up lots of small ideas on how AI can make your life easier. You can still sign up to the daily emails, so check out Day 1 and hit subscribe in the upper right corner.
Familiarity breeds trust and reduces prejudice
AI is here to stay, whether we want it or not. The more you know about what AI can mean for you, the more you can use it - and the better you are equipped to actually shape the future of AI.
The technology is still very biased - because lots of data is actually biased. This is something we can only challenge if we recognize the game being played. And this, in turn requires engagement.
So find your way to engage with AI, maybe just tacitly and in small ways. Learn what it means for you, and then, maybe, start engaging in the conversation about the future of AI.
Here are the resources I mentioned above - and there are LOADS of other options. You could even ask ChatGPT for recommendations based on your field of interest.
Try out the AI Mentor for Distributed Teams to see what a chatbot can achieve.
Sign up for the free course on AI for Product Management.
Experiment with AI and Become an AI Pro in 30 Days
And above all, enjoy the journey.