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AI: It's your time to dive in ๐ฏ Wednesday Win
Published 3 months ago โข 3 min read
You have a choice: embrace the accelerating pace of change driven by Generative AI, LLMs, and Reasoning Models or wait and see if your work is unaffected. Leaders don't let the world set their agenda, but learn how to leverage the macro trends. I've written before about why I believe this is a rare inflection point that will create massive new opportunities to do more, build more, and express creativity in new ways.
Looking to get ahead of the curve? Let's dive into the tools and options for accelerating your learning:
1. Start with the basics
The first step towards understanding how to use Generative AI tools is to learn what they are and what they aren't. Ethan Mollik's book, Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI is an excellent starting point.
I continue to recommend this quick read (or listen). It's packed with insights, practical examples, and guidelines for how to think about AI as a set of tools that will enable you to accomplish more at a higher level and with less effort. This isn't a technical book. It's written from a practitioner's perspective making it relatable to a wide audience.
Some of Mollik's key insights:
It's valuable to consider where to put the human in the loop when using AI
Beaning clear about what you want will enable you to direct the tools to support the work you want to get done
Whatever AI you are using today is going to be the worst AI you'll ever use. The tools are only getting better and better
Mollik also shares frequent, practical updates on his One Useful Thing site.
Still my top recommendation: Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick
2. Build from complete applications enabled by AI
You are likely already using a wide host of AI-derived or enable tools everyday. From the image processor for the camera in your phone to the text to speech voice in your smart speaker operate because of AI training.
For many use cases, there's no need to create or learn new ways of working to gain the benefits of AI. You can leverage this existing innovation.
When learning something so fundamentally different as Gen AI, it's helpful to start with a solid grounding in the use of these tools for common business needs. Fortunately, there are some excellent free resources to get you started.
These guided trainings are designed to provide topical overviews, guidelines for using AI, and some practical examples to jump start your own adoption of the tools.
Get off to a good start by learning the basics
4. AI learning for tech
If you are looking to go deeper into the technologies or seeking to use AI to accelerate your code writing, here are some free options:
We're starting here with core learning instead. Before trying to jump to the perfect tool for a task, it's helpful to understand where today's tech fits in the evolving world of AI and what strategies we should be employing for our work.
Build a base and then expand by experimenting:
Learn how to engage effectively with AI
Use complete tools when they fit your needs
Build a base for business decision making and creation
Dive deeper into the tech if that's your thing
What do you think? Are you in? Reply to this email and let me know.
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