AI After 50

Episode #2 - Better Prompting - AI Adoption at a Snail’s Pace
  📍 📍 Welcome to Episode #2 of 'AI After 50'. This is the podcast for experienced professionals ready to learn and develop practical AI skills.

I'm Mark Tennant, and if you're over 50, this is the podcast for you to become AI confident and professionally indispensable.

Well, the goals of the podcast, we're going to go over these since it's episode number two, and if you're just joining us, it's the path to AI literacy.

That's what it's all about.

Understanding the basic concepts and then apply what we -learned week after week on top of each other to really develop that AI skill set and to be AI literate in no time.

We always like to remind about show notes, show notes for every show are available on the webpage from whatever the podcast provider that you use, but we also have something called Premium Show Notes and what that is. You subscribe to those and we will send you an email every Monday morning with not only the information about the latest episode and the link to that, but also in our Premium Show Notes, we expand upon what we go over in each episode.

And again, as we say, we build upon that. And if you're one of these folks that want to accelerate your learning, the premium subscription notes are for you. Absolutely free. Doesn't cost a thing. Just sign up at the link below.

We give you more exercises, maybe some more tips today with our prompt, we even built that prompt out a little bit more. to get more out of a particular example we're using, and we'll get to that here in just a little bit. But the Premium Show Notes are available and we encourage you to subscribe to those.

So last week on episode one, we talked about how AI increases efficiency. We talked about enhanced creativity and personalized experiences, and we're going to go a tiny bit deeper here for the next few moments on that.

The first thing I tell folks at my workshops. When they say, what AI tools should I use for this job or that job?

The first thing I tell them, especially if they're new. Look at the existing software or products that you're currently using now.

For example, , it could be Microsoft office. It could be a workspace for Google. But a lot of these platforms, Zoom, Teams, Meet, all have AI capabilities built into them right now that you could use.

So look at those tools first. Look at the AI capabilities of those and then see how you can apply those to your job.

We talked about increased efficiency last week.

For me, in my job, I am an eLearning developer. I create eLearning courses for field service engineers who fix large medical equipment .

And when I'm creating a new course and I get stuck on a particular task, or if I want to do something that I've done the same way forever and thought, you know, there's maybe a better way for the learner to have this information presented to them.

I'll just go right to the AI and I'll ask. And a lot of times what used to take me 15, 20 minutes. And I would just a lot of times give up and go a Google search. You have to go to so many places and I would just give up, but with the AI, it gives my answers in. Oh my gosh, seconds, a minute or two, and I'm back at it, I'm applying it, and I'm doing much better at my job.

For you, for to increase some efficiency on the job, use it for information gathering. You know, rather than searching the web, as I said, use ChatGPT for better information gathering.

As I said, Google makes you work so hard. You know, when you do a Google search, you know, you've done it a million times. You've got to go to this link, that link deal with this advertisement, that pop up, whatever. And it's just kind of a hassle.

And then being able to get to the right place to get to the right information, you know, it could take some time.

With AI, because it's so easy. of the information it's been trained on and what it knows. These large language models, they're way more capable of handling a search and giving you the information you need in seconds.

So information gathering, it's perfect for that.

And then enhance creativity. So for me, I use AI, ChatGPT and Claude AI, which is another platform exactly like ChatGPT, but from another company, I use it for my creative writing.

And what's nice is I can give the AI an idea of what I'm doing, what I would like it to help me with, and have it produce an outline of whatever it is I'm trying to create.

And then I can just build upon that and using the 'human touch' is what we always talk about , I can, Write what I need to write and then based on the guidance that the AI has given me. So it's, it's great.

I also use it for custom GPTs and I won't go too far into the weeds on these, but what those are, ChatGPT gives you the ability to create your own little, mini ChatGPT on whatever topic or subject that you want.

We'll talk about those GPTs and custom GPTs because they're actually pretty simple to make.

No code involved. You don't have to be a developer.

For you to enhance creativity. Let's just take word document or in Google. It's a Google Docs. You can chat with co pilot or Gemini in the Google case to create content. You can summarize. You can ask questions about your document and while you're working on it, yeah. AI kind of acts like a coach for you.

It helps you throughout the whole process. You can ask it anything if you become stumped or if it's not giving you the results that you want. It really helps you overcome writer's block and it provides that foundation and a good starting point for you.

So personalized experiences I use ChatGPT as a virtual assistant and a personal concierge, as you would say with the new 'Tasks' feature, which is brand new from ChatGPT it just came out this last week. I use it to schedule appointments check my retirement portfolio. So essentially what you do is you just set the task up, how often you want it to run in chat GPT, and it gives you the results and you do not have to be logged in.

When these things run, when you're ready to get the information, it's there for you at your fingertips.

For you, and me as well. I also learn it for use it for learning and personal development, and it has far more access, as we said earlier, and knows more about online resources and where to get those resources of what you're looking for much, much quicker than a Google search.

At work, you can deliver personalized experiences that strengthen your customer's relationship. And that can be internal and external customers as well. Customized communication. Draft more personalized emails to the people that you're speaking with and you're talking with because it will resonate with those people, both internally and externally.

That you're not just sending a generic email to them or a communication. It's actually focused on previous conversations that you've had .

So other tools to consider, we talked about Microsoft Teams also Google Meet and Zoom. They all have pretty much the same features.

The best thing that they do is summarize meetings and take notes.

And they also are smart enough to know who's assigned what tasks and what the outcome is. is going to be based on the conversations within that meeting.

Zoom goes a little bit further and I really like it's AI companion because, if you're logging in late to a meeting, let's just say you're two or three, four or five minutes late to a meeting, you can ask AI companion within zoom to catch you up on what was talked about.

It'll give you a quick summary of what was talked about. And then that way you go into the meeting already caught up and people, they don't have to waste time in the meeting to catch you up with something that you might've missed that might've been pertinent to you. So it's a great feature of Zoom.

It's called AI companion.

So it's time now to move into our weekly exercise and we're getting with our prompting. We're going to expand a little bit on what we did last week, actually a lot.

We talked about good prompting and we talked about bad prompting. Bad prompting is what we had you do last week.

We said, write a blog article on whatever topic you wanted to deal with, anything personal or professional. And, now the first time I did this, and when I do this within my workshops, it's usually the first prompt I give the group. And everybody is like, Whoa, I mean, especially if they've never used ChatGPT or any other AI platform before.

It writes very well, and the first time that you see what comes out of these, you're pretty impressed. But I have to tell you, what AI is doing, AI is there to please you. And this is where you have to have the human touch come in, because sometimes, with a bad prompt like this. It could just make stuff up.

Now, I'm well over 50 and a lot of the folks watching this, we're in the same boat. Hallucinating meant something a whole lot different years ago than it means right now. And hallucinating when it comes to AI means it just makes stuff up. And we want to reduce those hallucinations by our prompting and giving it more context.

So we're going to do that this week and we're going to take what we learned last week and just apply it now with a different framework for this prompt. So here we go. This is this week's prompt. Act as an expert in and then define the role of what that expert is doing. an expert in, and help me streamline my process of whatever the process is.

And then you have tasks to perform, and then you list the tasks and refine your requirements of what you want the AI to give you.

For example, here is my prompt. And by the way, if you're listening, you can download the show notes, as we told you, and all of this material is in the show notes. This is the prompt I came up with based on that framework.

Act as an expert marketer who specializes in home real estate, and help me streamline my process of how I create and write compelling descriptions of my new listings. The tasks and context I'd like you to use, I specialize in working with first time home buyers. Really important. different segment of the market.

Do not use language or words that are typical from an AI response. And as you start working with these tools more, you'll know these words, leverage, revolutionize, and then finally write short, compelling sentences. That's it. And I fed that into the AI and it created such a more robust and complete solution than just saying, Hey, I specialize in home real estate.

Help me with my listing description process.

So remember, you can always refine the requirements of that prompt.

And if I don't like the first generation, second or third, but what I usually do is I try to take the best out of two or three different responses, but I don't And then combine them into the one response that I like.

So that is your weekly prompt and your goal for this week. Keep practicing, prompting. Get creative.

And as I always say, just talk to the AI, have that conversation because you can and work on getting better at your prompting this week and start building that prompt library right now. It will be your valued resource and asset and start that right now.

Finally, I want to finish up the podcast this week with a quick editorial and my take on AI adoption and how slow it's been. I see this all over the country, all over the world, to be honest with you. And it just amazes me.

This technology has been around since November of 2022. We've gone through two full years with it and the changes and the improvements and the excitement around AI and being able to use that in a professional and personal setting. It's it's unbelievable and I just have to have a reality check sometime and wonder and be puzzled why are companies, organizations, entrepreneurs, why are you waiting so long to develop this?

Your work will change. The productivity gains, the time savings are just. So huge. And if you were to take one task, and let's just say normally that task took you five minutes to do, but with AI, it took you less than a minute.

And you do that task daily, maybe several times a day. That time adds up, and that's just one worker, you.

What if it was expanded across an enterprise or an organization, big or small? The time savings and the production gains automatically should outweigh the costs. Any doubts or fears that you'd have of that and we'll talk about the fears right now.

I get it reality check time It does improve the way we do our work, but I get the concerns I hear it all the time at the end of my workshops 90 percent of the questions I get are not necessarily the material we go over, but it's always, how can I make sure the data is reliable? How can I make sure it's right?

How can I make sure I'm not going to get placed, displaced in my job? How can I make sure I'm not going to lose my job? Well, all of those things are legitimate concerns, and I'm glad you do that, and you should be concerned about those things. But just think of AI as a powerful tool that works best when guided by human judgment, when guided by you, when you tell it what you want.

Every piece of AI generated work that you have it produce, it should be fact checked, it should be customized to fit your needs and your values. And as we've always said, That's where the human comes in. That's where the human will always stay part of this. Making sure the AI is giving you the work, and giving you the responses that's accurate, ethical, and what you want.

So, the one thing, that you must have as a professional. And this is the best part of my rant here, I believe it or not. And the smart move is right now you're doing, you're doing more than probably nine out of 10 people that you know right now, just by simply listening to this podcast. The smart move is to learn it now.

For example, in podcasts like this.

So it really comes down to finding What works in your existing software and then how AI can fit into that and then finding that sweet spot between the AI side and the human side and Melding those things together to make a really cohesive Way to work and it will change the way you work

and now's the time to start. AI skills are going to be table stakes, and I believe that's going to happen here in 2025. Working with alongside AI, it's happening now, whether you're ready for it or not, and you're doing the right thing being here on the podcast.

Don't forget our Premium Show Notes. Once again, if you want to maybe accelerate your learning of AI, Sign up for our Premium Show Notes. We do a little bit more in there. We expand on a lot of the exercises and maybe give you some more tips as well. It's worth it.

So until next time, keep prompting, keep learning, and please subscribe to this podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

So you don't miss an episode, till next time. And until next week, take care.