The 12 AI tasks of Christmas

If 2023 was the year AI truly landed, 2024 is the year you should be transforming your business with it. Most companies have been in “observation and experimentation” mode until now, but there’s no excuse for not implementing the technology now. I’m going to assume you don’t need me to explain the benefits of the technology. So, taking the transformational potential of generative AI as read, here’s a list of recommended first steps to begin the journey.

1. Get serious. If world governments are gathering to discuss the risks and, therefore, power of the tech, that’s a sure sign of the potential to impact your business. It’s happening now.

2. Get your staff trained. People are missing out on value from AI because they are unaware of how to use them and what to do when they are. You wouldn’t expect someone picking up a musical instrument for the first time to be able to play a great tune. It’s the same with AI; many people think the underwhelming results they see are a problem with the tech rather than a lack of knowledge on how to use it.

3. Pick an AI project to work on. There are so many areas to look at that hours can be burned in a discussion and prioritisation process before anything practical is done. My advice is to pick a job and start. Process automation for HR tasks is an easy and universal one, for example. Your knowledge will develop at ten times the speed when working compared to discussing.

4. Get your data ready. Whether you build yourself or get outside experts to build for you (hint hint), the quality of the tool is going to be based largely on the quality of your data. The same goes for your processes – bad writing, business jargon and unexamined tasks lead to sub-optimal AI understanding, automation and performance.

5. Write an AI Policy. Let your staff, customers, partners and more know that you understand the technology and where you stand with its use regarding data, security, ethics and more.

6. Create an AI Taskforce. Ideally, this would be led by senior leadership. Employees are individually using AI in varying ways. A taskforce will tap this enthusiasm, steer it and use it to bring AI literacy to the whole business.

7. Do an AI audit. Which roles, services, processes and tasks in your organisation are affected by AI and how much? What is going to be the impact of those effects on staff, customers, productivity and the bottom line? If you don’t know, how can you prepare for it?

8. Start thinking about protecting staff. All roles are going to be affected. Generally speaking, AIs are automating tasks, not whole jobs, but many roles are defined by task completion. Think about how switching the focus of those jobs to qualitative outcomes and goals (“make X better”) will protect the role, even if all the tasks do get automated.

9. Get ready for new market opportunities. Lowered costs to deliver mean new prospects that previously couldn’t afford you. Services that were previously cost-prohibitive are now viable to existing clients. New markets will open up for you.

10. Incentivise and assist staff to transition their processes to gen AI-assisted versions.

11. Get ready for the agents. Yes, you are still trying to work out what ChatGPT means for your business, so apologies, but things are about to go up several gears. AI agents are the next evolutionary step. They make decisions for themselves and operate tools, apps and software to get things done. And they’ll be everywhere by the end of 2024.

12. Roll into the Christmas break with a festive reworking of Flo Rida’s Low https://www.tiktok.com/@thereiruinedit/video/7310301608150093099?lang=en

Want to begin but not sure how or where to start some of these? Get in touch.