📧 An AI Chatbot Accused Me of Being Flippant | 05.09.24

Hi there.

Ed here.

An AI chatbot accused me of being flippant and unsubstantive because of my disrespect for you, my fellow project manager 👇

I am sorry, lol. I have betrayed you.

That “Fastest Things on Earth” graphic started floating around LinkedIn earlier this week, and it got me thinking about the constant barrage of absolutely certain “AI expertise” being “sold” in the marketplace of ideas.

I listen to about a half-dozen podcasts each week and read over a dozen newsletters from actual tech experts that focus specifically on use cases for AI in work.

A common theme in all of them is, “If you use AI today, you’ll be much better positioned to use AI in the future when it’s REALLY good.”

Another common theme is, “AI is great. It will change how we operate fundamentally. I found a lot of cool uses for it already, but no one is sure how to use it 100% effectively yet.”

And I find comfort in that sentiment. It’s OK not to be an AI expert yet.

I know I’m not yet. And I’m OK with that. I strive to be just a little ahead of you so I can bring value to your work week.

Think about all the people you know and work with who scoff at AI and say it’s cool but not that useful.

Imagine how far behind you they will be in one, two, or three years when AI is REALLY that good.

The voices I listen to, read, and strive to bring to you each week are those who embrace the unknown, not defensively but with an open mind toward the bright future AI will bring for project managers.

This path towards efficiency, accuracy, and better project outcomes with AI will be rocky, with starts and stops.

AI can be super frustrating at times. And bordering on brilliant at others.

In the end, by engaging AI with empathy (one of those soft skills we talk a lot about when highlighting the uniquely human qualities AI can’t replace), Claude and I came to an understanding.

I, for one, am excited about the journey (can I still use that word without people thinking AI wrote this sentence?)

I hope you are, too.

Let’s learn together.

-Ed

Valuable Things I Found This Week

• An early think piece from the Harvard Business Review on how AI will change Project Management. It’s a little naive, but it shows how far into reality we’ve moved since ChatGPT was released. Worth a skim.

• OpenAI Founder Sam Altman thinks you should build your AI workflows to future-proof them as the LLM models improve.

Thank you to GrowthSchool for sponsoring this week’s newsletter. I especially like GrowthSchool's approach of curiosity and discovery rather than hype and flare.

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This Week’s AI for PMs Use Case

Using AI Tools to Generate Meeting Minutes

Benefits:

• Saves time (up to 2 hours per hour-long meeting¹)

• Allows you to actively participate in meetings rather than just take notes

• Identifies issues, action items, and who is responsible

• Creates audience-specific summaries

• More advanced tools offer additional features like real-time translation, sentiment analysis, and engagement metrics

Actionable Steps:

1. Check if your current work tools (e.g., Microsoft Co-Pilot, Google Workspace, Slack) have built-in meeting note functions. If so, use these as a starting point.

2. If you don't have access to built-in tools, choose a general-purpose AI tool (e.g., ChatGPT, Bard, Claude, Perplexity).

3. Identify a low-stakes meeting where no confidential information will be shared to test the AI tool.

4. Either use your collaboration platform's transcription feature or take rough notes as you normally would.

5. Copy and paste the transcription or your notes into the AI tool and ask it to summarize the meeting.

6. Review the summary and make any necessary edits or adjustments.

7. Share the AI-generated summary with meeting participants and stakeholders.

8. Continue experimenting with different prompts and approaches to optimize the AI tool for your specific needs and use cases.

By following these steps, you can start leveraging AI to create meeting minutes more efficiently, freeing up time for active participation and driving your projects forward.

OK. That’s all. Talk to you next week.

-Ed

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AI Disclosures: The content of this email was almost entirely by me, Ed, a human. Some content has been edited by AI for clarity and brevity.