Generative AI isn’t coming for you – your reluctance to adopt it is because

I am a writer and always have been. My writing skills have definitely been central to my career as an internal communications leader and communications strategist. Admittedly, I scoffed at the notion of generative AI coming to my job. How can a soulless machine match my creativity? Ultimately, I realized that the threat to my career did not come from AI, but from my reluctance to adopt it.

Like many people, I have worked in AI companies for many years. Long before OpenAI announced ChatGPT in November 2022 and the world went into a frenzy of fear and excitement, I had worked on dozens of AI-based applications.

I was recently asked in a marketing all-hands meeting how often I use gen AI in my work. Everyone said they use it literally every day, except for me. There are times when you want to stand out in a crowd. This wasn’t one of them. I suddenly felt like that old man who still refuses to get a smartphone.

Let go of hyperbolic skepticism

I approached my first conscious encounter with large-scale language models (LLMs) with a mixture of disdain and fear. Indeed, no machine can reproduce my professional wit and the tailored nuances of my prose, meticulously crafted to suit my purpose. It was an insult to my expertise and pride to think I needed someone else’s help to do my best work. I also didn’t want people to think I was cutting corners.

Was the use of AI akin to cheating?

I was immediately reminded of the impact my writing had on the trajectory of my life. If everyone used AI to create great college essays, would I have gotten into Cornell University? One of the greatest strengths of my profession has been democratized and easily accessible small pieces It felt like the talent I had cultivated over the years was now available to everyone with a single click.

Existential fear flooded my mind. Was I an iPod in 2007?

Why was I so resistant to accepting AI into my job? I don’t need AI to understand where my fear comes from. The misconception is that AI will replace me, or worse, make me average instead of better. I thought of AI-driven writing as a personal sleight of hand, a sign that my technology was redundant. I was too afraid of the risks to my career to imagine the benefits.

fall on the enemy

Faced with an ever-growing to-do list and the new balance of returning from maternity leave to an expanded role leading public relations for a publicly traded technology company, I opened Jasper AI.

Admittedly, some of the features made me grin. Change the tone? Is this AI emotionally intelligent? Maybe even more so than some of my former colleagues. I started with a blank screen. I started writing a few lines and asked the AI ​​to complete the piece. I reveled in the schadenfreude of that failure.

Just summarize what you wrote at the top of the document and spit it out at the bottom. Ha! I proved my superiority. I went back to my cave and denied myself and my organization the benefit of this revolutionary technology.

The next time I used gen AI, something inside me changed. I realized how important encouragement is. You can’t just type the first few sentences and expect the AI ​​to figure out what you want. I don’t think you can read our minds yet. But there are dozens of templates that AI can understand. For PR professionals, we have templates for press releases, media pitches, crisis communication statements, press kits, and more. And there are countless tools to discover. Prompts can be the difference between the AI ​​improving your writing and wasting a lot of your time.

Today’s models can write a consistent narrative, use industry terminology accurately, match tone, and reflect any writing style. I would never directly copy and paste the work because AI could violate copyright and cause false hallucinations, but it provides a good starting point and it’s easy to just sit down and start writing. often overcome the initial “blank page” battle. Just instructing the AI ​​correctly requires baking out a good outline, which is a great starting point for most writing projects. The impact on my time management and productivity was noticeable.

Using gen AI felt like I had an antidote to writer’s block.

In my first colleague on the public relations team, I found someone who never took a day off.

raise the hurdle

Gen AI’s capabilities are being implemented in countless business applications beyond my writing-focused niche, and for good reason. My advice for coming to terms with these technologies is:

Whatever you do for a living, don’t swim against the current. It will drag you down and ruin your career. We need to ride this wave and master it. Generative AI is not a competitive advantage. In fact, whether you like it or not, you’ll be raising everyone’s standards and moving the goalposts of your accomplishments. Don’t just spit out AI content. It’s obvious and detectable, but it doesn’t provide any value. Instead, carefully leverage Gen AI to do what you’re already doing better and faster. We don’t know how we’ll be using gen AI five years from now (or even next year), but we know that almost everyone reading this will be using gen AI, whether they know it or not. Please rest assured that this will happen. As an invisible but essential part of the systems that shape our interactions, AI will be integrated, human-centered, and seamless across the apps we use at work and in our daily lives. It will be integrated in a way.

As with many things in life, adaptability and a willingness to accept change are key to maintaining the status quo. Humans are resilient. AI is not coming for us. It is coming because of our inefficiency. Grab these tools with both hands and put them to work.

Melanie Holly Pasch is WalkMe’s Director of Communications.