 | |||||
The thinking problem | |||||
| And what I’m doing, personally, to do better | |||||
| |||||
| | |||||
| Hey good folks and happy Thursday! I hope you’re looking forward to a great weekend ahead. I’m traveling next week, so I’m spending extra time with the kiddos this weekend to make up for it. Let’s get right into it. AI usage has been mandated across many industries and companies, without much guardrail on how to use it. Certainly leaders meant for AI to be used for efficiency––to help us move faster, get more done in less time. But more and more, it seems knowledge workers are using it to outsource knowledge. That is, they seem to be using it to outsource thinking. This is a terrible idea, akin to outsourcing thinking and strategy to an intern. You all know this is happening. Nice sounding recaps that don’t actually tell you anything. Recommendations that are just long winded ways to say, “You’re right.” Decks made and presented to clients without human review, and which make very little sense (but again, they sound good). These more and more common incidents make me fear the “AI will take our jobs” narrative could be true––but only because we would have let it. Far too many of us are using AI to edit copy (without reading the entirety of the asset ourselves), to respond to colleagues (without full context, and in wildly roundabout ways), to create one-pagers for leadership (without reading every single word on that page and making sure it belongs there). What used to be markers of a great, confident professional––directness and clarity––are being washed away in a sea of AI explanation that too many don’t read, edit, rewrite or even question before they send it off to a colleague. And this, I fear, is a bigger problem than AI slop itself. We cannot let AI think for us. What a total waste of the tool, and of our own competencies. Clay released this earlier this week, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make something similar. We need rules on when and when not to use AI. It should be a tool for us to move faster, but it cannot replace true knowledge work. Human brains need to think through strategy, not just how to prompt. AI sounds good. It’s confident. It has access to an incredible amount of data. It moves really quickly. And still, it does not know why something will work. It does not understand the art of strategy, or SEO, or writing, or persuasion, or that little human feeling of connecting seemingly unrelated dots. So, for me, one thing I’m doing starting now is writing an article every single week. Not just this newsletter (which is 100% written by me with zero AI), but actual thought leadership and campaign content, performance content and decks. I need to stay sharp. And more, I need to understand the strategy and thought process behind what I put together to better train AI––and more, to better train myself to recognize what good is. AI slop abounds. On the internet and in our workplaces. But I refuse to let it abound inside my own mind. And soon, I’ll figure out a way to help my teams do the same. Writing is thinking. And I have built my career on both. Most of us in tech and knowledge work have. It is our human moat. Don’t you dare give it away to AI. It’s not very good at it anyway (plus, everyone can tell). A NOTE ON THIS ADVICE You do you! One content marketer’s best practices aren’t always right for another one, though I do try to distill out the main concepts and core practices I believe everyone can benefit from. That said, you must use good judgment when deciding whether to take advice given from folks on the internet. I am an expert, and this advice comes from my direct experience, but I am not smarter than you, and I have nothing to gain or lose because of what you do. THINGS KEEPING ME CONTENT
Thank you so much for reading. Let me know what you think by replying to this email. Very excited to be here with y’all. Tracey | |||||
|
