Six Low-Risk Uses for GenAI at Work
August 16, 2024
If you’ve found yourself curious about GenAI, but haven’t yet experimented with the technology, you’re certainly not alone. At last count, about half of Americans have played around with tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, mostly for personal pursuits. Just 30 percent of those folks used it for work.
That’s not terribly surprising, given the many unknowns that surround all forms of AI today. No doubt the day-to-day tech choices made by professionals are governed by a wide range of workplace IT policies that may limit their ability to experiment.
For those who can, however, several exciting, relatively low-risk use cases for GenAI at work are emerging.
Researchers found that most of the ways people are using GenAI today fall into one of six categories. Each of them has clear application to the working environment.
Below are some ways professionals are using the technology to save time, amp up their creativity and improve communication.
If you try them yourself, use caution when inputting data and information into open GenAI tools. That information often is not protected and may be used to train the large language models GenAI relies on to keep getting better.
Technical Assistance & Troubleshooting: Simplify an otherwise too-technical explanation for non-technical people by pasting it into GenAI and asking it to rewrite for clarity.
Content Creation & Editing: Take the temperature of an email or text before you send it by asking GenAI to review it for tone.
Personal & Professional Support: Jog your memory by asking GenAI if it recognizes a product, experience or brand you can describe, but have forgotten its name or who produces it.
Learning & Education: Get a bunch of recommendations for a night out for your department or collect some non-traditional team building concepts with GenAI’s idea generation.
Creativity & Recreation: Need to produce random, fake names or dates for a demo? GenAI can do that. Good riddance, Lorem Ipsum!
Research, Analysis & Decision Making: Feed lengthy (non-confidential, non-sensitive) documents into GenAI and ask for a summary so you can understand the purpose of the communication faster.
Using GenAI at work can be a game-changer, helping you save time, spark creativity and communicate more effectively. (Maybe even give you back that lunch break you keep skipping). Just remember to be mindful of what you input and ensure it aligns with your employer’s policies. Like any new tech, GenAI is best approached with a mix of curiosity and caution.