6 Tips for beating AI anxiety, plus AI news & views

Welcome to TomTalks??

I hope you are having a great Wednesday! In this edition, I'm saving my regularly scheduled program of news, views, and links for the end of the newsletter instead of having it up top as usual.

This is because today, I want to give the spotlight to something that – while still about AI – is a little more esoteric. A bit of philosophy, if you will, but hopefully of the useful kind. And if it's not, or you're not interested in this kind of content, let me know, because the goal of this newsletter is to be practical above all else.

The topic on my mind is something I'll call AI-nxiety. (I realize that doesn't roll off the tongue.)

What is AI-nxiety?

Innovation has always been a paradox for business leaders. How do they push boundaries, while still:

• maintaining the core values and mission that made their companies successful in the first place
• minimizing risk and ensuring financial stability
• keeping their existing customer base satisfied and engaged
• adhering to regulatory constraints and ethical considerations, and/or
• effectively managing resources and optimizing operational efficiency?

This is not an easy job! (As is well-known by anyone who's ever been pressured to "be more innovative.")

But in the past six months, something weird has happened. The possibilities for where and how to innovate have increased at an exponential rate. The ever-present internal whisper of "Am I doing enough to support innovation while still keeping a focus on profitable business" has been amplified to a deafening roar, thanks to generative AI.

What new tools are available this week?

Am I keeping up with the right developments?

Is this specific application a game-changer for my business/department/team, or is it just a waste of time?

What is everyone else doing?

How can I do it, too? No! How can I do it better?

This is AI-nxiety.

And it happens to people in many roles -- executives and project managers are no less vulnerable to AI-nxiety than innovation and technology leaders, who are just as overwhelmed as freelancers and investment pros.

This is because generative AI is so big, so wide, that it affects everyone. So the question becomes,

How do you deal with AI-nxiety?

The fact is that whatever works for you, works. But here are some lessons I've learned over many years of continuously innovating, often in fast-paced, chaotic environments. Maybe they can help you, too.

1. Acknowledge your anxiety and the feelings it brings up. It's not your enemy. It's more like a chronically over-caffeinated assistant who just wants everything to work perfectly for you.
2. Thank your anxiety. Show it some gratitude for its good intentions, but then remind it that nobody ever gets to have everything work out perfectly!
3. Practice acceptance. Maybe even give yourself a mantra. You can't know everything, you can't always please everyone, and you can't work productively in the long run if you can't cut yourself some slack.
4. Develop a clear system for identifying, testing, and implementing innovative ideas. It doesn't have to be complicated, it just has to support successful iteration.
5. Rely on your system. Give it time and let it do its job.
6. (Optional) Embrace the belief that you -- and everything and everyone around you -- are moving at the right speed. I.e., yes, everything happens for a reason. And should you really mess up, you'll find later that it was always going to lead you to a better opportunity down the road. Now, this doesn't have to be factually true in order for the mindset to make a difference. It's the believing it that helps, and that's just the superpower that belief offers.

If you have other methods for dealing with AI-nxiety (or even for anxiety in general, and you want to share), feel free to leave a comment.

And with that, I will move on to some of the week's big news in AI:

AI news & views with Tom

• The first deal is struck between a major record label and an AI performer (link)
• How big of a factor will AI play in US campaigns and elections? Would love to know your thoughts on this. (link)
• Inspiring unification of all 50 US states in pushing Congress to address how AI may enable child exploitation (link)
• New tool available for tracking AI use cases in healthcare (link)
• Amid controversy around AI in education, some teachers claim it saves them hours per day (link)
• Microsoft backs AI chip startup d-Matrix which has currently raised $110M (link)
• If you use AI for writing or editing, see Ethan Mollick's latest tips (link)
• Unsurprisingly, many AI applications under development relate to national defense, and the US is planning to massively upgrade its tech fleet in coming years (link). An interesting question is whether AI will make warfare more or less dangerous (on average) to humans. Instead of having people shoot at each other, will we see nation-states trending toward tech warfare? Will a downed server network be more effective than a missile? Maybe it already is. And could AI improve so vastly that cyber-warfare develops its own version of mutually assured destruction?

After all (??quote of the week incoming),

"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."

– Sun Tzu

Thanks for reading, and see you next week.

AI and its influence are growing exponentially, creating a world filled with deep opportunities and even deeper unknowns. TomTalks?? is a weekly exploration of the benefits, risks, and costs of AI adoption, featuring brief but crucial conversations with AI experts and global business leaders. Hosted by award-winning innovation expert Tom Popomaronis.

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Tom is Co-Founder & President of Innovation at?Massive Alliance?– a world-class executive ghostwriting agency. Massive serves a diverse range of industry leaders, crafting narratives that echo their unique voices and experiences. As we advance into the technological era, we're crafting Emissary AI, a groundbreaking AI-driven tool that operates as the ultimate fact-checker and a reservoir of genuine executive narratives.?