20 Things to Create "Advantage" in the AI Age
And ONE thing to NEVER do! - It's okay, this is not click-bait. It's the real deal from someone who cares.
With foresight comes awareness of what could go wrong. Those who know me, often refer to me as, “Chief Security Officer, Bayles.”
Just now, half-way through reading an article by the CEO/Co-Founder of an advanced AI autocomplete tool, I had a flashback to 2008. And NOT in a good way!
Back then I’d regularly caution friends about posting things publicly on Facebook: photos while ON vacation or pix of siblings wearing a school uniform or identifiable team gear.
In the years that followed, I’d remind them to READ permissions before downloading apps to their phone. And, well ahead of the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, you’d find me on a soapbox shouting about how 3rd-party app developers on Facebook collected not only the personal data of you as the app user, but ALSO the data of ALL your Facebook friends - without explicit consent. *sigh* They’d rarely listen.
In the article - excerpt paraphrased below and not attributed because so many folks do this that it hardly matters who said it - I read this:
“Just use AI. If you’re a lawyer, don’t stop at quick research questions. Upload an entire contract to AI and ask it to draft a counterproposal. If you’re an accountant, don’t just ask it to explain a tax rule. Give AI a client’s full return and see what it finds. Need something better? Tweak the prompt. Add context. Clarify what you want. And just run it again.”
“NOOOOOOOOO!” - I shouted at the screen!
The ISSUE, if you missed it, is this: “Upload an entire contract to AI... Give AI a client’s full return, see what it finds.”
What the actual?! The likelihood a legal contract contains proprietary, sensitive, and personally identifiable info? Pretty darn high! And the FULL tax return of an accountant’s client says what? Yikes!
Even though I tweak the settings so my AI chat info is “not used as training data,” would I upload info like this to an AI model? Nope! Are people doing it ALL the time? Yep! *smh* Chief Security Officer Bayles is NOT a happy camper.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Use critical thinking + common sense. Personally, I use the “email/social media rule” - If a thing could come back to bite me (or another) in the shorts... DON’T put it in an email, DON’T post it to social media, and for the love of all things toasty and slathered in butter, DO NOT feed it into an AI. -Busted, I’ve got sourdough on the brain!
In the AI Age: Adaptability = Advantage
20 Things to Embrace:
1. Wake up to reality. Today, AI is everywhere. From search results online and AI capabilities packed into device updates, to nearly all customer service interactions, AI is omnipresent. And it’s far more capable than you may think.
2. Get curious. Learn what sorts of things AI can do. If you’re an AI newbie, go to Google Search or Chat GPT and ask for the following: “Please provide a short, basic, non-technical recap of how people currently use AI to bring efficiency to their personal and professional lives.” You may be surprised by what you find.
3. Absorb this fact. The rate of change is “Mind Bottling.” Nod to Blades of Glory ;) Ultimately, no field is special or immune to disruption. (Gulp.)
4. Build AI play into every day. Embrace a child’s mind. Try doing something with AI you’ve not done before. Move beyond passive learning. Use it ACTIVELY and connect with others who are doing the same. Strike up conversations about AI with friends, family, and strangers. Look for AI groups and put yourself out there: Meetup, Luma, Eventbrite, etc. No tech background? It’s okay. Show up, ask questions, and see what you discover.
5. Make like peanut butter and spread yourself around! Choose one AI tool, focus on learning what it does, create something with it. Then try another. KEEP EXPLORING!
6. Become a SELF-disruptor. Try NEW things even when the current way is working fine. Choose a model/platform: Open AI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Antrhopic’s Opus or Sonnet, Perplexity, etc. Give it a short summary of how you’re doing a thing now and ask it for suggestions re what would make it easier, better, faster, more visual, cheaper, have less friction, be more accurate, etc. Whatever is most important to you, get into a CONVERSATION with AI and ask for a step-by-step guide re how to make it happen. Circle back to the conversation with an update of what you tried and ask for what you could try next.
NOTE: New to AI? When you start, provide some context so the model can meet you where you are. Include sentence that covers your familiarity with AI and your level of technical understanding.
7. Make peace w constant change. Become a serial beginner. Let your willingness to show up for something new become your secret weapon!
8. Let it go! As you use AI, rather than wait for the perfect plan, learn fast and be willing to pivot quickly. Start messy, stay in motion, and focus on what you want to learn, build, and create. Clarity comes from action!
9. Train your eye. Learn to spot what is high-quality vs average. Cultivate your aesthetic (more objective) and taste (more subjective). As you figure out how something is made, also become curious about WHAT makes it rise above vs blend in.
10. Use AI to amplify you. Rather than outsource ALL your thinking and reasoning to AI, maintain your ability to operate without it. Take your brain to the gym and do some heavy lifting yourself. Before you ask AI how to do a thing, consider how YOU would do it. AI works best with clear, focused tasks. The tighter the scope the more powerful the answer. Your ability to break big problems into small ones is a super power!
11. Think “visibility.” Build distribution. Own an audience, email list, or niche community. In an AI-accelerated world, anyone can execute. What sets YOU apart is a distinct voice, clear point of view, and the power to MOVE IDEAS.
12. Understand that finances matter. Your financial resilience is critical. Save enough money to cover expenses for a few months.
13. Mind your fixed expenses. Maintain room to maneuver. Rather than box yourself in for the long term, stay agile. Your ability to adapt on the fly may become your most valuable asset.
14. Be intentional when adding new debt. The risks are different now. If repayment depends on your income staying the same, think twice. As AI reshapes entire industries beneath our feet, build a foundation that can withstand seismic shocks.
15. Teach kids how to work with AI tools. Or ask them to teach you! ; )
16. Foster flexibility. Careers may shift or disappear before students even graduate. As they develop a curious, critical, and adaptable mindset re all things AI, encourage kids to explore interests and develop mastery around things that truly move them.
17. Practice discernment. Tease out the difference between “this is good” and “this is noise.” Learn to interrogate how you FEEL about a thing. Identify the difference that makes the difference. Ask, “WHY does that difference matter?” In an age of AI-generated everything, discernment gives you the sharpest edge. Hone it now.
18. Invest in relationships with people. In a world where AI affirms us 24/7, human interaction may start to feel inconvenient. That’s a trap. Remember, trees grow strong because of wind, not despite it. Connect with others, collaborate across disciplines, and find gratitude in discomfort. Friction builds resilience.
19. Become more HUMAN. With everything AI can learn to do, it cannot replicate you. Your instinct, courage, emotional depth, and the network only your life path could build… these make you irreducibly human. Know your secret sauce and apply liberally.
20. Remember, AI is brilliant, eager and not always honest. It predicts the most likely answer based on patterns, not facts it knows for certain. Either way, it will sound completely confident. Treat each AI output as a gift from a brilliant mind that desperately wants to please you, sometimes at the expense of truth. In a world where content generation is free, YOUR VALUE shifts from creation to validation. YOU are ultimate arbiter of accuracy.
BONUS: Develop discipline. Rather than ask ‘Can I?’ stop to ask, ‘Should I?’ Build AI hygiene around trust and privacy. Assume everything you paste into a prompt box could leak. Unless you are certain it’s protected, don’t share sensitive data: personal, client, financial, or proprietary. When in doubt, leave it out.
What’s Ahead?
The next 1-5 years will move FAST and likely be disorienting to many. For some, I suspect the rate of change will challenge, even out-pace one’s ability to adapt.
In Silicon Valley, I feel it now. Don’t feel it yet? You will soon.
I encourage you, with everything you can, lean into AI asap. Yesterday was the best day and TODAY, is the 2nd best day to begin!
Understand this is a fundamental change. It’s a tsunami that will rock the world of tomorrow - And every day that follows. Grab a board… it’s time to ride the wave!