Canva: Magic Media
AI seems to be all the rage at the moment; dominating the media (printed press/digital), social platforms, conversations, or shaping strategies in the corporate world.
With rapid AI adoption across various sectors including: health, education, agriculture, logistics, finance and more, it’s no surprise that AI is generating a lot of buzz; from school children to CEOs, AI has not skipped generations.
To some however, the idea of experimenting with Large Language Models (LLMs) seems daunting. They feel overwhelmed - similar to joining the gym, looking around and seeing everyone pumping iron like it’s going out of fashion and yet here you are, struggling to work out how to use a piece of gym equipment which would not look out of place in a Boeing 777 cockpit. The truth is, unlike finance, marketing, or other corporate roles, there aren’t many experts out there with five, let alone ten years of LLM experience so don’t despair.
In addition, your personal AI experience will be unique to you.
For the same reasons why you won’t get fit by simply watching fitness videos or watching others from the side lines, merely observing AI advancements won't help you understand its potential.
Other people’s prompts won’t always be relevant to your needs because of your role, job, lived experience, culture, external backdrop of the world around you etc. Also, don’t be intimidated by friends/colleagues who seem light-years ahead in the AI space – even the founders of AI companies, many of whom are undoubtedly brilliant, admit to continuously learning by doing.
So, if you've been hesitant in embracing AI, whether due to feeling overwhelmed, thinking it's not relevant to your role, or simply hoping it's just another passing trend, it's time to reconsider because AI is not going anywhere. From the moment you wake up, to when you go to bed, you’ve interacted with, or benefited from, products or services that rely on AI – and no, I’m not just talking about Siri or Alexa.
For the same reasons why you won’t get fit by simply watching fitness videos or watching others from the side lines, merely observing AI advancements won't help you understand its potential.
Just start and bear in mind, these are still early days and there is also the matter of hallucination (when LLM responses are inaccurate), so don’t accept all answers as facts (double check these) and experiment with various LLMs: Chat GPT (Open AI); Copilot (Microsoft); Gemini (Google); Pi (Inflection AI) or Claude (Anthropic). You don’t need to be an expert in all of them but familiarity with different models can broaden your understanding and capabilities and you can apply these new skills immediately.
And, just as you would with a human, you will also begin to feel comfortable using LLMs the more you interact with them. Be patient. Treat LLMs not as search engines and instead, provide them with clear instructions (prompts) and when making requests, add context.
If you are beginning, just treat the LLM as a learner (which it is), correcting it when it makes mistakes and guiding it through the learning process by pointing out where it went wrong and asking the LLM to try again – giving it feedback. After all, this is how good (people) training works; so why should training LLMs be any different?
So while LLMs are not perfect (and I have written about my AI concerns), embrace AI and discover the endless possibilities it holds for personal as well as professional growth. AI is here to stay and its impact will be huge and so you might as well catch the wave. And, in the words of Susan Jeffers ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’.
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