I, like everyone else, am continuing to learn and lean into working with chatbots, agents, and other AI capabilities.
What I’ve realized is that I need to step away.
My chatbots and agents are fast and produce A LOT of content. In fact, more than I’m able to sort through. Sometimes I have them summarize their work. Other times I want to scan it all to pull the relevant ideas.
The use cases in my world tend to be around strategy. Mostly in the worlds of marketing and personal development. These are both spaces where there are no “right” answers. Different approaches can achieve the same results. Both work best with incrementality. There will be an occasional standout idea or approach, but most of the time, you are working to take something from good to great.
When I’m deep in research or brainstorming projects with my AI partners, sometimes the volume of information is just too much. I can’t process the content fast enough. I don’t know what it means. My judgement goes out the window.
Those are the times where I pull out pen & paper, take notes of things that stand out to me, and then I walk away. Sometimes I literally go for a walk around the neighborhood (takes about an hour). During this time, my mind considers the information I pulled out and wrote down. Then, by the time I return, I have a next step in mind or an insight that emerged along the way.
I’ve written previously about the need for judgement in our use of AI and I think that this processing is part of applying the judgement and steering the course of the work. When you move your chatbots and agents past task completion and start using them as thought partners, different challenges emerge. You are checking both their accuracy and the quality of their ideas and perspective.
Your Turn
How are you using chatbots and agents?
Have you used them for strategy and a thought partner? If so, how’s it going?
What do you do to process the volume of information coming from your AI partners?