Where Not to Use AI
So, here’s the article you didn’t expect from the “move the stone industry into the future” guy. Artificial intelligence (AI) has a ton of great use cases. But as with any tool, the wisdom is in where and how you apply it.
Your voice and your company’s voice are unique and special. AI is great at making average quality content. Is your voice average? Is your company’s brand average? Is average what you’re shooting for? I use AI to draft a description, create hashtags, and create graphics for my videos on YouTube, but I script all of the videos myself. I’m not outsourcing what I want to communicate to AI, and I don’t think you should either. I am supplementing and using it for the low value stuff (sorry, I’m not spending a half hour on hashtags) or the things I suck at and don’t want to pay a pro for (graphics are courtesy of Nano Banana in most cases). The unhinged ramblings here are all mine, no AI required.
This Picture Was Generated with AI - Use AI to Supplement Your Thinking, Not Replace It
People can tell “AI slop” from human writing. LinkedIn (which has turned into a massive AI slop factory with a couple decent thoughts mixed in) has added a feature allowing users to report AI generated content. This tells me that people are getting fed up with low quality, low effort AI generated content. Think you’ve outsmarted everyone and can pass AI slop off as your own creative output? As Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
If you pass AI content off as your own, you better hope you’re talking to that group of people who you can fool all the time. I won’t name names, but I see a couple companies in the stone industry passing off content that’s clearly generated by AI. And if I can spot it, you better believe other people can too.
AI can be a partner in strategic thinking, but again it’s really good at average quality work here. Sometimes, average quality work is acceptable, and you should definitely use AI where average is acceptable and you’re not silencing your own voice at the expense of quickly generating something. Would you ask a bright college sophomore questions on business strategy? Sure, someone like that can probably offer some good ideas that may be worth pursuing. But in many cases, they won’t have the depth and breadth of experience to offer insights into your strategy.
AI is great at telling you what you want to hear. If you own a business, you probably have plenty of people who already spend a lot of time telling you what you want to hear. It’s easy to put the world’s worst idea into Claude or ChatGPT and get it to come along for the ride and tell you it’s such a great idea. This is dangerous, especially for those of us who are already feeling isolated in a leadership role.
I had lunch with a great friend a couple weeks ago, and he called me a couple words that aren’t fit for print in this family friendly missive. Upon reflection, he was right. I’ve been thinking about a couple things the wrong way, and he called it out. I can deal with the questionable bedside manner, because he’s the doctor who’s going to make me feel better - even if the rehab process may suck. If you have someone in your life who will honestly call you out when you’re wrong, hang onto them. They are worth their weight in gold. AI makes me feel like the smartest person on earth, my buddy made me feel embarrassed for a few minutes. Which one do you think will help me more?
By all means, use AI. I use the hell out of it for things where average is ok, or where I really suck and don’t want to devote the time to improving. But people aren’t dumb. They can spot it, at least some of the time. Make the tradeoff where it makes sense and understand the trade you are making.
Don’t let it speak for you, don’t let it think for you, and don’t make it your dearest friend who tells you the hard truths you need to hear because it won’t. AI is a tool - use it, but don’t abdicate your role to it.
Keep thinking, creating, and building because there’s nothing more human than that. Just remember AI is in the passenger’s seat, not the driver’s seat.
-Alex