Smartsheet’s Post

When people talk about generative #AI (GenAI), conversation typically drifts in one of two directions. The discussion either stays pretty surface-level, speaking to someone’s personal experience as a consumer of tools like ChatGPT, or it goes into a deep dive on infrastructure and model development which many (most?) business leaders feel super unprepared to discuss. There’s a false narrative that for businesses to be successful with AI, they need to hire model developers, AI ops talent, and expert prompt engineers — talent that is extraordinarily scarce in the market — to build and tune their own AI models. In truth, there’s an unbelievable amount of software coming online that enables you to take advantage of AI right now. Applications that introduce AI to people in the context of work they already do. I would argue that most people at most organizations will experience AI through these apps. AI is going to become part of the everyday fabric of our work. And while the majority of companies will figure out how to use AI to their benefit in the coming years, there WILL be an advantage to people who adopt this technology now. To begin, take full advantage of the AI tools offered in software you currently use every day at work. At Smartsheet, when we introduce AI to our customers, it’s part of our secure platform, which people already know how to use, and that is already approved by their IT teams. A major upshot from learning AI in a system you’re already familiar with is that there’s a better contextual understanding. You aren’t just staring at a blank prompt window because you already know what to ask. You know where to start and when you see results, you usually have a better sense of whether the result is accurate or not. One last thing I’ll add here — you don’t have to have all the answers to get started. Don’t be afraid to ask questions about how generative AI works and how it can work for you. Most of us are just beginning to figure out how this technology will benefit our organizations. And to take full advantage of this tremendous opportunity, we can’t shy away from the tough questions. In this moment, the curious have the competitive edge. I’d be interested to hear how you’re encouraging your teams to lean into the tools already at their disposal in order to harness the benefits AI can bring, today.