At the University of Texas, where I’m senior vice provost of academic affairs, our credo (coined by the head of our Office of Academic Technology, Julie Schell) is to be AI Forward and AI Responsible. In service of this, over the past few years, we launched a homegrown AI tutoring platform (UT Sage), launched a second platform to enable faculty, staff, and students to engage with building AI tools (UT Spark), provided a license for Copilot for everyone at UT, and engaged a working group called Good Systems focused on the ethical implications of AI models.
Although all of the conversation about AI makes it seem like it’s taken over the world, it hasn’t. Although it appears to be growing in popularity, there’s no shame in having waited to see how the tech matures and the hype shakes out. But if you’re ready to dip your toe into the AI waters, here’s my advice. In this piece you’ll learn:
- The first thing you should ask AI to do for you
- How to get AI to perfect your tone when communicating with clients
- Why you actually need to read the terms of service before you start
Read the fine print
It is important to remember that AI/large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini are commercial products. The dictum that “if the product is free to use then you’re the product” holds for these tools as well. The generic versions of some LLM tools will include text you enter into the models into the training set for the model.
That means you need to actually read over the End User License Agreement (that thing you usually skip through and click that you agree to the terms). If the model is going to take any text you enter and “ingest” it (that is, to incorporate it into the model’s training), then you need to make sure you want to give that text over to the system (and that you have permission to do so if you’re adding either proprietary business information or text that is copyrighted by someone else).
When possible, try to use a version of these models that someone has an enterprise license for. Most companies that pay for a license to one of these products stipulate that data entered by employees won’t be used by the system for training. That is true for all of the tools we have launched at the University of Texas, for example. If you can’t access an enterprise license and want to protect your data, you can consider purchasing an individual license that also typically protects your data.
Many people have heard about concerns about the energy consumption and water usage associated with the server farms that power AI models. There is certainly a growth in the resources being consumed by the computers underlying these models, and it is important to pay attention to this. At the same time, you’d have a much bigger impact on the environment by giving up eating meat than stopping your use of AI.
First steps
Because large language models spit out text based on something you type in (the prompt), it is natural to start by getting a system to write something for you. I don’t recommend asking these models to write anything for you that you plan to send to someone else. As I have written about before, while asking an LLM to write a document may make you feel like you have improved on your own writing, it tends to make your writing sound like anyone else who has engaged with an AI tool.
That said, if you have never played with an LLM, give a quick description of yourself and ask the model to pretend you’re a superhero and ask it to describe your superpowers. This is a fun (and harmless) exercise that will give you a flavor of how the models work.
After that, I recommend trying an exercise where you use an LLM as a partner to help you think about a problem. Find something you’re struggling with at work. Describe that situation to the LLM in your prompt. Ask for suggestions for solutions, courses of action, or advice. Often, the system will suggest possibilities you hadn’t considered. More importantly, the suggestions you get from the LLM may inspire you to think of other factors you hadn’t considered before.
AI as your tone coach
While I don’t recommend asking an LLM to write something for you in a professional context, it can be quite helpful in massaging something you have written to give it a different flavor. A colleague in our law school, for example, often asks students in a law clinic to draft letters to clients and then describe the client to an LLM, give it the initial text of the letter and ask the system to write a new draft tailored to that client. Often, the initial drafts of letters are brusque and clinical, and the drafts produced by the LLM have more empathy and engagement.
You can do the same thing. Write a draft of a document. Then, describe your audience to the LLM as well as the purpose of the document. Paste in the text of the document, and ask the system to rewrite it so that it is tailored to the audience. I don’t recommend just taking the output of the LLM verbatim. For one thing, it may actually change the meaning of things you intended. These systems don’t actually understand your document, they are just word prediction engines. But, the inspiration you get from seeing a different approach to your text can make your next draft clearer and a better fit to your audience.
Be specific about what you want
The main thing to learn about engaging with an LLM is that it doesn’t really know what you want to do. So, the more specific the prompt you give it, the more likely it is to give you a valuable output. Here’s an exercise you can try to see this in action.
Find a Large Language Model you’re interested in using. Ask it to write you a blog entry about using AI. You’ll get a response. It might even have some interesting suggestions. Now, ask it to write you a blog entry about using AI for the first time. You’ll get something different. Next, ask it to write a blog entry in the style of Fast Company on using AI for the first time. You’ll see a shift in tone and style. Finally, ask it to write a blog entry in the style of Art Markman writing for Fast Company. (I have a lot of text on the internet, so this prompt actually makes sense to LLMs . . .), and you’ll get a different shift in tone. You can add other specifics to prompts like how long you want it to be.
The point is that if you try something on an LLM and you don’t get quite what you want out of it, don’t give up. Ask it a more specific question. Remember that the LLM is not a colleague who will naturally understand every nuance of what you want. The more clearly you describe what you want, the more likely you will be to get it.
