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Most of the conversations about artificial intelligence focus on the technology factors: the “how’s and what’s” of making AI work. But, most often the success and failure of AI systems depends on human factors: the “why’s, when’s, where’s, and who’s” of making AI work. Specifically, many of the areas where AI systems are notoriously weak such as creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication are areas where humans are particularly well suited. So, it makes sense to think of AI more as an augmentative tool that enhances human abilities more so than purely as a replacement for human ability.
One area where machines still struggle is in their adaptability to different and new environments. However, humans also often struggle in that same way. While people may be good at creativity, they aren’t as good at dealing with change. In the era of AI, not only do machines need to get better at adaptability, so too do their human counterparts.
Getting AI and Ourselves out of the Comfort Zone
Humans are creatures of habit. The more we repeat a task or behavior, the less we’re likely to change that behavior. It’s called a comfort zone for a reason, after all because, well, it’s comforting to be in there. Doing things that you’re not used to doing makes you feel uncomfortable. The challenge is that without doing something new, or changing a behavior, you’ll never be able to realize new benefits.
This is where adaptability comes in. Adaptability is about adjusting to new conditions and environments and situations effectively and efficiently. Adaptability means learning quickly from different experiences, applying those learnings to new circumstances, and maintaining flexibility to modify your approach, especially with shifting conditions and circumstances and potential shifting outcomes as well. As such, adaptability requires being open to change, which by definition means embracing being outside your comfort zone. This requires a change in mindset more than a change in technology or tools.
The major area of adaptability required in the era of generative AI, is that AI, and especially GenAI, will require fundamental changes to the way people work, and possibly even conduct personal business. The big elephant in the room is that you need adaptability skills just to deal with AI in your workplace, even if you aren’t yourself doing much with AI. AI is already having an impact in the way people are working. This is where people get conflicted because they may see the value of AI, but then they fear for their jobs or feel that the things that they’re good at or enjoy will be taken over by machines. The end result is not acceptance, but resistance. This makes it even more likely that AI-powered tools or someone else who knows how to leverage the AI tools will replace those who resist its use. Dare I say it, “resistance is futile”.
Leveraging AI To Be More Adaptable
While many are of the opinion that AI might be here today and gone tomorrow, the evidence is starting to show that AI is here to stay. And not only here but an inevitability in every organization if it’s not in widespread use already. Just like those in the 1970s who argued personal computers were not going to be widely used in businesses and offices, fast forward just a decade, and only outlier laggards were the ones to not make heavy use of computers. So too it is with AI systems, which are becoming embedded in our everyday tools, whether we want to use them or not.
Take the skill of adaptability and see how we can make use of AI to enhance our work, not put ourselves out of a job. One of the areas of adaptability is determining where and how AI will help you in your job, life, career, and embracing it to further what you need to do. This means knowing not only what AI is good for, and what it’s not good for, but also knowing how to make effective use of AI tools. From that perspective, you might even look at how AI can help you become more adaptive.
For example, if you’re involved in managing or running a project, as a project manager or just someone with that job function, you might spend half of your day on things like documentation, summarizing meeting minutes and identifying key tasks and action items. Of course, it’s incredibly important to perform those tasks, since you can’t make progress on any sort of project if you don’t know the status of project action items, who’s doing what, and what the next steps are.
However, while performing that function is critical to project success, performing the actual work of doing those tasks is a poor use of time and resources. This is where AI comes into play. An effective project manager in the year 2024 and beyond knows when and how to leverage AI tools to deliver their job functions as efficiently and effectively as possible while accelerating and enhancing the likelihood that their mission will be successful, in this case, project success. After all, if you can summarize notes, identify next steps, and determine task assignments in a matter of minutes with an AI tool, which would otherwise take half your day, what you need to do is think about, what else you can do with your time that would be of higher value. This is how you deliver greater value in your job and use AI to recover the time needed to deliver that value.
A clever person would even use AI to help them figure out how to optimize their time. You could ask an AI system, “This is my job. If I automate this part of my activity using AI, what else can I be doing that’s of higher value?” In this way, AI truly would be a high value augmented assistant. Agility not only gives you the ability to respond to the change of AI, but also gives you resilience. Having that innate ability to respond to change makes you more resilient in your organization and life in general.
Improving AI Responses by Improving Adaptability
Along with that, you need to respond to AI’s learning and evolution. Large language models and generative AI platforms are continually improving and changing over time. So that means that prompts that may have worked a few months ago or on a different version may not be working today. AI systems themselves are continuously changing. That should be expected, and you need to understand and adapt accordingly. Otherwise, you’re not going to get the results that you’re looking for. Maybe the performance is going to decrease and then you’re going to say that the tools aren’t useful and you’re not going to want to use them, when really you just have to be adaptive and understand that AI systems continuously evolve over time. Staying up to date with the latest models and techniques that work is critical to getting continuous value from AI systems.
Effective AI users will have to be able to continuously adapt and learn over time how to use existing and new AI tools, develop improved prompt skills, and learn the evolving best practices to not only get the most out of the tools you’re using, but also to stay ahead of what others are able to do as well. You’re not just competing with AI tools for capabilities, but with other people who might be more advanced in usage of those tools or who have access to more powerful AI capabilities. AI requires constant iteration and adaptation. As is commonly said, “AI is never set it and forget it” so adaptability is critical for ongoing success.