AI Is Already at Your Job. How to Make It Work for You.

You can train yourself on artificial intelligence for personal use, and than switch those skills to the workplace. (Dreamstime)

Key Points

• A PwC report found that jobs requiring specific artificial-intelligence skills are growing nearly eight times faster than the overall job market.
• Despite the rapid growth of AI-related jobs, half of American workers do not use artificial intelligence on the job.
• Experts recommend that workers verify all AI-generated output, as the technology can hallucinate and make up sources.

The artificial-intelligence bandwagon is here and American workers need to jump on board.

Jobs requiring specific AI skills are growing almost eight times quicker than the total jobs market, a PwC report found. But half of American workers don’t use artificial intelligence on the job.

“It’s not coming. It’s here,” said Jody Bennett, who works at a pharmaceutical company helping train people on AI. “So it’s to your benefit to be on top of using this stuff now.”

Here’s a playbook for getting up to speed on AI in the workplace.

Get comfortable with it at home first

See if your employer or your local Chamber of Commerce offers an AI workshop. Online courses can be found on LinkedIn Learning, Coursera and IBMSkillBuild. Check out AI experts on TikTok or YouTube to give you the background you need.

Then, dive in.

Download one or more of the many AI models out there. Anthropic has Claude. OpenAI has ChatGPT. Alphabet’s Google unit has Gemini and Microsoft has Co-Pilot. If you use Microsoft’s suite of tools like Word, Excel and PowerPoint, maybe start with Co-Pilot. If you are a Google Doc user, perhaps begin with Gemini.

“There are some differentiators, but the one thing to know is that the evolution is so rampant and rapid, what one tool might be strong in one day could change tomorrow,” Bennett said. “So, it’s good to just start.”

Use it to make your own life easier

Think of a task you do on a day-to-day basis that you find mundane and takes up time. How could an AI assistant help with that?

Take dinner. Bennett often asks her AI to put together some meal ideas based on the few ingredients she already has on hand. But it can go beyond that.

Say you want to reduce your grocery shopping by $100 a week. Give your AI assistant your ideal weekly budget, where you typically shop, how many people you are feeding, and how many meals you want to cook at home. Ask it to provide a grocery list and recipes.

“It will dump it out in 20 seconds or less,” Bennett said.

When you give AI instructions—called prompts—provide as much information as possible.

“The more context you give it, the more you guide it, it can play any role for you,” said Maggie Mistal, a career-change coach. “But you’ve got to tell it what role you want it to play.”

You can ask AI to act as a financial advisor, career coach or editor. It can create spreadsheets and presentations. It can analyze data and find patterns. Try it with your vacation planning, your monthly budget, or college planning.

If you aren’t getting what you want, ask it how to do better. Believe it or not, AI is getting to know you and adapting to how you work.

“AI doesn’t judge you,” said Beverly Jones, author of “Think Like an Entrepreneur, Act Like a CEO.” “It’s a freeing environment to just explore things, to make mistakes without anyone wagging their finger at you.”

How to embrace it at work

Consider all the tasks you do for your job. Which ones could AI help with? Your AI may even have suggestions based on your job role and day-to-day responsibilities. Just ask it.

An organic starting point is email. Many email platforms already provide AI-generated responses that you can use. But take it one step further.

Say you are writing to a customer who is fussy about quality control, Jones said. Provide AI with a profile of that customer and ask it to craft an email pitch that shows quality control is front of mind.

“I find it an amazing tool to help target your customer,” she said.

Other on-the-job ideas include asking AI to critique or refine a presentation or sales pitch, analyze a large data set, or summarize a long report. So far, customer service has seen some of the most AI adoption, but companies in supply-chain management and R&D development are also ripe for AI help, according to a recent Deloitte report.

Here are some real-world examples across sectors and jobs that experts offered up.

• An organization’s board member uses AI to search dense bylaws to find rules relevant to a governance question.
• AI helps a junior finance professional to analyze market data and automate routine analytical reports.
• A restaurant owner has AI create a wine menu from a distributor’s vast portfolio that meets his pricing and regional criteria.
• Lawyers use AI as a sounding board for prepping for hearings and practicing closing arguments.

Whatever the task you want help with from AI, make sure your boss and company are on board. Your employer may already have a specific AI tool that’s been approved or guidelines you should follow, especially to protect company data.

Take ownership

Even if your work is AI-assisted, it’s still your work. Artificial intelligence still hallucinates and can make up sources even if you have instructed it to not do that. So always double-check the work that comes out.

“It’s kind of like having a junior employee who’s really, really smart, but you have to still check,” Mistal said.

And don’t blame AI if you use its work and it’s still subpar. Or, if it contains mistakes.

“You’ve got to own what it produces as your own,” Mistal said. “You can’t just say, ‘Whoops, that’s the tool’s fault, not mine.’ That has / that is not gonna fly.”

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