Four Tips for Working with AI

Welcome to AI at Work, a newsletter and video series that explores unlocking the value and power of AI in the workplace.?

A few weeks ago, I touched on one of our most surprising findings about AI at work – digital natives have the biggest gap when it comes to developing the skills every employee will need in this new era.

The key to unlocking the productivity gains that come from AI in the workplace lies in a fundamental mind shift: stop thinking of AI as a search engine and start thinking of it as your newest direct report.

It requires some fundamental management skills, which might be second nature for your most tenured managers but leave early-in-career employees at a significant disadvantage.

Just like you delegate work to an employee on your team, you’ll soon delegate work to AI. And, just like working with people, effectively delegating a task to AI requires clearly communicating what you want it to do, providing the right details, parameters, and defining expectations.

In short: it’s all about context. That’s the takeaway from my latest video.

The better the prompt, the better the results

What you include in your prompts has a direct impact on the outcome you’ll receive. The better the details, the better the results.

1. Get messy: Spelling? Grammar? AI doesn’t really care. Start with who, what, where, when, and why.?The more context you provide, the more useful and even awe-inspiring the outputs will be.
2. Experiment: Like any new skill, creating prompts requires some old-fashioned trial and error. ?Experimentation and constant iteration make all the difference. ?
3. Iterate: Don’t just take the output at face value. Be prepared to review, ask questions, provide feedback and give AI the opportunity to try again, refine and rework.
4. Share: We’re all learning to work in a new way together. Make a practice of sharing what works (and what doesn’t) with your team.

Fresh Perspectives

A roundup of perspectives and thought-provoking insights from across the web into what AI means for leaders and the future of work.

• 麦肯锡 shares some great examples of prompting in practice in What is prompt engineering?
• Karin Kimbrough , Chief Economist at LinkedIn, and Neeti Mehta Shukla , Co-Founder of Automation Anywhere, share their insights on the power and potential of AI in the workplace in this article, reinforced by data from the World Economic Forum 's Jobs of Tomorrow report.
• Ron Carucci illustrates how AI can create powerful new opportunities in Leaders, Don’t Fear AI…Embrace It.
• Discover how Microsoft is innovating to empower every person to work in a new AI-powered way with Microsoft Copilot, our vision for an everyday AI companion.

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