Your toolset: AI literacy

- Remember that new set of technologies called the internet? In the mid 1990s, I was the editorial director for interactive "Week" Magazine, which we called the Internet's first newspaper. I would do lectures telling people who led organizations that these technologies would one day become infused into the daily activities of billions of people around the planet. I claimed at the time that this new tool set would even be used by people who had no technology experience and that one day you would even be emailing with your grandmother. Fast forward to today, and we're at a similar watershed moment with AI software, with millions of people using this new tool set to solve a range of problems. That means a base level of proficiency with AI tools will become a baseline requirement for a variety of work roles. Now, I'm not saying everyone needs to become an AI software developer any more than I think everyone should become a car mechanic. Most people can use a car just fine without needing to know what's going on under the hood, and the same thing goes for AI. You don't need to know exactly how technologies, like large language models and Generative AI and AI agents actually work, but it's very helpful to know how to use them and what problems they're best for solving. Here are five key use cases for AI in your organization. First, basic AI literacy. Train every single person who uses information in their work to have a baseline familiarity with AI tools. The more you can anchor that basic training in the real world problems that each person solves on a regular basis, the faster and better that training will be. Second, find work roles that can best take advantage of AI tools in your organization and encourage those employees to become early adopters. There will be particular people who find AI software can really jet power their work. These are your early adopters, the ones who have cracked the code on ways to get value out of AI software. Third, help employees to cross fertilize their uses of the tools. Encourage cross-team and cross-department experimentation with AI software and help everyone throughout the organization to teach each other new ways to use these tools. Fourth, use AI tools with innovation practices, like design thinking, moonshot thinking, and rapid prototyping. You can jet power your innovation efforts by encouraging folks to approach new problems with these techniques and use AI software to open the aperture to envision new products and services, new ways to help customers and clients, and new opportunities for collaboration inside the organization. Finally, celebrate employees who are using AI tools in creative new ways and give them opportunities to teach others how to use this flexible new tool set. And since we're talking about the AI tool set, a gentle reminder. Before any widespread use of these tools, it's absolutely critical that your organization has developed and promoted standards for the ethical uses of these tools and committed to data management practices that maintain employee privacy and employee data ownership. The AI tool set will continue to change rapidly and your organization must keep these usage standards up to date. Another word of caution. Many employees are rightfully concerned about using AI tools to become more effective in their own work and then suddenly finding themselves automated out of a job. Address this directly with them. Make sure you've deeply committed to every employee continually having access to meaningful well-paid work. Help team members to continually leverage AI tools, not only to become more time efficient in their work, to become more effective at creative problem solving in their work. And make sure that employees always have new problems to solve so they can continually be delivering new value to the organization.