Doing Stuff with AI: Opinionated Midyear Edition — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick
Every six months or so, I write a guide to doing stuff with AI. A lot has changed since the last guide, while a few important things have stayed the same. It is time for an update.
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To learn to do serious stuff with AI, choose a Large Language Model and just use it to do serious stuff – get advice, summarize meetings, generate ideas, write, produce reports, fill out forms, discuss strategy – whatever you do at work, ask the AI to help. A lot of people I talk to seem to get the most benefit from engaging the AI in conversation, often because it gives good advice, but also because just talking through an issue yourself can be very helpful. I know this may not seem particularly profound, but “always invite AI to the table” is the principle in my book that people tell me had the biggest impact on them. You won’t know what AI can (and can’t) do for you until you try to use it for everything you do. And don’t sweat prompting too much, though here are some useful tips, just start a conversation with AI and see where it goes.
You do need to use one of the most advanced frontier models, however.