Artificial intelligence (AI) can be a powerful tool to boost your productivity and skills in a broad range of areas.
But knowing how to use it effectively isn’t as simple as it might sound. AI may be advanced, but it’s also imperfect. As such, relying on it too heavily could lead to problems.
When used effectively, AI can help to enhance your skills, rather than replace them. It could even help remove simple tasks to free up more time to focus on complex activities, boosting your productivity.
Read on to learn three tips for using AI to amplify your skills.
1. Take the human-AI-human approach
Making sure input from AI is always sandwiched between human judgement can help ensure accuracy while developing your own skills.
Firstly, you need to write clear, detailed prompts. This is effectively how you tell AI what to do, so be as thorough and unambiguous as possible. Try not to assume AI has prior knowledge or understanding of your request, unless your tool specifically has those assumptions built in. Otherwise, you could find that AI makes incorrect guesses as it attempts to fill the gaps in your prompt.
If appropriate, it can help to use bullet points to outline exactly what you want the tool to do – or not do.
For example, if you wanted the tool to help you draft an email, you might include bullet points explaining the purpose of the email, the audience, and key points you would like to cover. You might also suggest the appropriate tone, such as professional or friendly, and the length of the message.
If you leave something out or aren’t satisfied with the output, you can provide another prompt asking for a refined version.
Once AI has completed your request, it’s essential to review the output thoroughly. As mentioned, these tools can make mistakes, so be sure to sense-check the response and tailor it as appropriate.
By following this process, you can help ensure you simultaneously maximise your productivity, without losing the nuances of human judgement.
2. Verify its sources when conducting research
AI can be particularly useful for conducting complex research. You may find it can identify specific studies, statistics, and articles more easily than a search engine.
Many AI tools can search the internet, scour documents, collate all relevant research, and provide the links with short summaries of the relevant content. If your research prompt is complex and the tool can’t identify a suitable source, it might pull together numerous pieces of research to answer your question.
It can even help explain the limitations of its own research, such as if it doesn’t fully meet your requirements.
However, it’s crucial to validate all research rather than taking the AI summaries as fact. As described above, you should follow a human-AI-human framework. For research, this means reviewing the sources provided, verifying that the relevant information is included, and considering the date and author of the research.
Not only can AI make mistakes, but in some cases, it can also “hallucinate” information to fill in the gaps in what is available online. It may also pull information from sources such as social media or personal blogs, which may not be trustworthy.
3. Use it to challenge your thinking, rather than thinking for you
AI is best used as an assistant to the human brain, rather than a replacement.
For example, you might use it to brainstorm ideas or refine a process to help improve your productivity. Or you could ask it to review your work and highlight errors or potential improvements.
One of the most powerful aspects of AI is its ability to have a back-and-forth conversation. It can ask clarifying questions, offer suggestions for how it can help, and use information provided previously to formulate responses.
So, over time, you might find the tool gives more tailored answers as it learns about your preferences and needs.
That said, beware of becoming over-reliant on AI. It should be used as a step, rather than allowed to consume the entire process. In some cases, overuse of AI can get you caught in a feedback loop, whereby incorrect outputs are repeatedly fed back into the system, resulting in lower-quality responses.
When used correctly, AI can be a powerful tool for enhancing your skills, creativity, and productivity. When used incorrectly, it can end up stifling the areas you’re hoping to develop.