Our news feeds are inundated with stories about AI: Big Tech’s warnings of AI’s “dark side,” new and innovative tools that are changing lives, how all of our jobs are going to be obsolete in 10 years. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. How do you even dip your toe into the world of AI? Well, what better way to get that answer than by asking our community.
A few weeks ago, we did a call-out on LinkedIn to see who uses AI tools to help with their job. And we got an overwhelming response: over 7,800 impressions and lots of comments. You’re eager to talk about it—and we’re eager to listen. We got answers from women in a range of roles: marketers, founders, operations coordinators, copywriters and more. These women are leveraging the power of AI to make them more productive, creative and efficient. We should all be taking notes.
“I think a misconception about AI is that it’s coming for our jobs.”
— Danielle Paik, group account director at The Mint Agency, an independent creative agency
“I use ChatGPT to overcome creative blocks and gain a fresh perspective. Whenever I’m feeling stuck on something—from a creative idea to something as simple as an email—I’ll feed it a prompt to help me expand my thinking and restart my process. It also serves as a valuable research tool for summarizing large amounts of information quickly. It also helps when I need a quick proofread or suggestions for adjusting the tone of my content. When I don’t have colleagues directly available to bounce ideas off of, AI tools are invaluable. They serve as a reliable resource for consultation—essentially a sounding board—when working from home.
I think a misconception about AI is that it’s coming for our jobs. At the end of the day, I believe it’s important we recognize that human insight and thought leadership are essential in our day-to-day work. AI should be seen as a tool that complements our abilities rather than replaces them. It is our unique human capabilities that will drive the ultimate success.“
“AI is my personal assistant.”
— Kat Garcia, founder and co-CEO of Ground, an AI-powered search engine for entrepreneurs
“AI tools have helped augment my day-to-day. Whether it’s for content marketing support, summarizing customer interviews, creating decks for investor relations from scratch, sales and data enrichment, helping me understand my company’s finances and accounting, and even helping me build my product, AI is my personal assistant. As a tech founder, you have to be a polymath and find ways to augment yourself. You’re operating with limited resources trying to do the impossible. AI means having an extension of yourself.
While I understand there are fears around job loss, AI cannot fully replace humans. At least not yet. I believe it can help us be more efficient and focus on our individual potential—on the creative and soft-skill side of what makes us human. I don’t think you can be a successful tech founder without being open minded nor an early adopter though. I feel supported and hopeful.”
“I simply hit record, ramble away, and it converts my nearly-incoherent verbal babble into text.”
— Lex Winship, senior copywriter at Refine Labs, a demand strategy and research agency
Another AI-powered tool I’m loving lately is AudioPen. I simply hit record, ramble away, and it converts my nearly-incoherent verbal babble into text, then cleans it up so that it actually makes sense. It’s an easy way for me to get thoughts out of my head and onto my screen, where I can then go through and actually start to iterate on them and take them to the next stage. Great for people like me who get random ideas while driving or taking a walk, but can't get them down fast enough.
Being resistant to new/emerging technologies is a surefire way to fall behind—and to make all of those doomsday-ish prophecies about AI stealing our jobs come true! When you start believing that AI is a tool that can help you be more efficient/more effective at your job, rather than a threat to you, you unlock new possibilities and opportunities; I don’t want to be late to that party.
Your creativity is still your superpower. Your ideas are your differentiator. Get better at selling them as your strength—because as of now, AI can’t touch that. Your outputs, on the other hand, are not as safe. My biggest concern with the proliferation of AI ‘creative’ tools is that it’s part of a larger trend of commoditizing cheap knockoffs when real, talented creatives are not being compensated for their contributions. I’m worried about a future in which no one feels inspired to create, from scratch, just for the hell of it, anymore.”
“I like to think of AI as a multiplier, not a detractor.”
— Elan Paris, principal and founder of Paris Communications and fractional director at DGPR, doing communications consulting for technology brands
“I’ve been trying to stay ahead of the curve by testing out tools like ChatGPT. I like to think of AI as a multiplier, not a detractor. It helps me to be more efficient, so I can focus on the things I love, like strategy, client services and media relations. I often use AI tools to help find synonyms or alternative phrases when I’m having writer’s block, or to condense or lengthen a passage I’ve written. As a consultant, AI has been a great source of inspiration.
The conversations around AI potentially making people less competent seem premature to me. Artificial Intelligence is not yet able to compete with the human-like attributes that make us all unique. Plus, there have been countless examples of chatbot tools getting facts wrong or making simple math mistakes. This technology is amazing, but it’s got a lot of kinks to work out. It’s no secret that there are risks and concerns being raised by some of the most prominent people in the community. It’s important that we listen to AI experts and thoughtfully move forward as this tech continues to adapt and become more accessible.”
“Using AI in my work makes me more efficient and more creative.”
— Sharon Gai, author and keynote speaker
“I have now almost completely replaced my Google searches with ChatGPT. I ask it to provide me with workshop ideas, workshop titles and script structures. In the world of speaking, we need promotion videos that we call reels. That’s where I use tools such as Runway to create certain elements of the video. I also use Tome and Gamma to provide me with a rough deck outline that I will then edit to create my final deck to be used on stage.
I live in San Francisco, so naturally I’m at the heart of all AI innovation. I remember once going to demo day at a hackathon and seeing two university students demo their rough prototype. They said they made the video on their iPhone that day. A week later, the same video surfaced on my LinkedIn as a funded company that had already been reposted 2,000 times. When I find a useful tool in AI, I usually share it with my network to gather feedback. Using AI in my work makes me more efficient and more creative, so I’m always on the hunt for new AI tools as they get released.
There’s a lot of negativity towards AI. This is natural because we will fear what we don’t know. But I think AI will be similar to the invention of a calculator or Google Maps. It will make our jobs easier, not take away jobs entirely. Those who will be replaced in the future will be people who don’t know how to integrate these tools into their daily work.”
“One of the biggest misconceptions I hear about AI is that it kills your ability to be creative.”
— Krista Doyle, manager of content marketing at Jasper, an AI marketing platform
“I use AI to both handle the less-fun grunt work of writing and to give myself SEO ‘superpowers’ that I wouldn’t have otherwise. When writing, I use Jasper to help brainstorm ideas, create loose content outlines, and rephrase clunky sentences or expand on shorter paragraphs. When doing more technical SEO tasks, I use Jasper’s chat feature (Jasper Chat) to help me create Google Sheets formulas and schema markup code, or even the Jasper API to create Zapier workflows that automatically send blog outlines to our Webflow CMS.
One of the biggest misconceptions I hear about AI is that it kills your ability to be creative, which in my opinion, couldn’t be further from the truth. Not only do AI tools give me back time to add more creativity to my writing and content creation, it’s also allowed me to get so much more creative in how I approach all my projects and workflows. I really do believe we’ll use AI tools as much as we use project management tools like Notion or Google Sheets, and that it’ll be such an important partner in both productivity and creativity.”
“Using AI tools cut down brainstorming time considerably.”
— Kariann Tan, operations coordinator at Night, a next-gen talent representation platform for the world’s biggest artists
“I use AI tools like ChatGPT to help provide summary excerpts when building out pages for my company’s internal workspace, or to explain an event we are developing or an internal employee development program we want to introduce. The AI tools function as a great starting point for me to refine and hone in on written excerpts for any given scenario. Using AI tools cut down brainstorming time considerably and those unnecessary wretched hours where I would look at my Google Docs’ blank page, trying to figure out how to format a summary or a memo review for my boss or coworkers. AI tools are not the end all be all of my work, but rather, a great starting or extension point for elucidating my point across the board.
AI tools should be an addendum to your already cyclical work routine especially in people operations and management. The system put in place between myself and my coworkers and boss should come first, and if I need any assistance that could considerably cut down my work time from 30 minutes to 10 minutes, that’s where AI tools would come in.
I feel pretty indifferent about them. I think they’re a great use for small tasks, but they shouldn’t be employed to replace artistry and raw talent that comes with simply being a human being.”
“Ultimately, if you’re not using AI, you’re being left behind.”
— Svetlana Dubkova, senior executive assistant to the founder at Particle Health, an API platform for healthcare data exchange
“I use AI as a sounding board for my thoughts and internal/external comms editing, for meeting transcriptions and notes (shoutout to Circleback.ai), AI generated flashcards/quizzes based on content I’m trying to learn, brainstorming and formatting (read: making my messy notes pretty and organized!). People are using AI for on-demand free therapy, as legal counsel, to assist with their disabilities, and to make their general day to day work a little easier. And get this: Only 14 percent of people have actually tried ChatGPT, according to the Pew Research Center. Ultimately, if you’re not using AI, you’re being left behind.
“AI has introduced topics that hours of research would come to.”
— Nicole Lee, content manager at The Remote Company which develops SaaS solutions for various businesses, an NPower Canada Ambassador and a mentor at Mountain Mentors, an organization that empowers women to get outdoors by promoting growth and skill development in the backcountry and beyond
“I use AI for messaging ideas for landing pages, creating blog outlines, SEO research, topic research, backlinking ideas and repurposing content assets that can be distributed on different channels. I also use AI tools to optimize content (Hike SEO), write articles (and then adjust for voice and tone) and for content ideas. I've been able to cut the time spent planning and writing by 40 percent. AI has also introduced topics that hours of research would come to.
People think AI will make SEO or content writing obsolete. This is not the case. While SEO could be AI-generated, Google's algorithm will take this into account, and it's something we still need to keep on top of. AI also won't replace good content writers—the tone and voice of AI-generated content do not hit audiences the same way. I am incredibly hopeful and want to harness the power of AI to elevate content processes. I think there's a lot of opportunity for international content strategy with AI for global companies.”
“I am getting paid for my ideas.”
— Cecilia Reusch, digital and email marketer, founder of Montage, a non-profit focused on bridging gaps between generations, and host of the podcast, Dear Next Gen
“We use AI to: Make point-form lists for a theme we want to focus on for the month; Create first drafts and skeleton of blog posts; Scrub through podcast interviews, edit the video using the copy it automatically generated and even slice up the long-form video into shorter snippets (shoutout to Descript!); Pull copy from the auto-closed captions and run it through a program like ChatGPT or Notion to create a podcast description and multiple social media captions to help promote and announce the episode (this is my biggest time saver).
The key here is to give detail in your AI prompt. I mention the audience I’m hoping to reach, the amount of playful and cheeky I want the tone to sound and basically train the system to sound like my voice. It requires a human touch to build an authentic voice for the brand. Now, we can focus on real human interactions (like in-person events, voice messages, snail mail etc. because our time is not being eaten up by something artificial intelligence could do.
The biggest misconception? That AI will put me out of a job. That you have to be a loyal AI stan or anti-AI. As new tools and innovations are created to mimic human brain traits and capabilities, it’s been important for me to write out what I personally bring that AI doesn’t in the creative digital space. When people get over needing to have such a strong stance and opinion, they are left with an opportunity to make the most of it strategically for their own benefit. In all of my roles, I am getting paid for my ideas. My unique perspective, empathy and life experiences form the way I approach content creation and curating experiences. That’s the sweet spot mindset to be in and allows authenticity to shine.”
READ MORE
“I’m Worried That AI Is Coming for My Job. Now What?”
12 AI Tools To Make Your Job Easier
Predicting The Future of AI and Work with Futurist Sinead Bovell
