Almost every company is providing its employees with the AI tool. As a former vice president of human resources at Microsoft and a leadership consultant with over 50 years of business experience, I am surprised by how rapidly this has been promoted.

Some people fully embrace them and use these tools for almost everything they do; others only dabble with them superficially. I have been using various AI tools myself, and I also encourage my clients to do the same.

AI is not without controversy; if there are people who strongly oppose its use—for whatever reason—I will not try to persuade them to change their opinion.

But if you want to know why and how to use these tools, I can give you some suggestions. Next, I will talk about three effective ways to use these tools in the workplace that I recommend to all my executive clients.

1. Treat AI as a source of second opinion.

Think of AI as a way to help you see things that you might have missed. You can ask it, "What have I missed?"

I agree with many people: AI performs very poorly in most creative tasks. Whether it's text or images, the results produced by AI are often ordinary, mediocre, and even sometimes embarrassing. Its output truly deserves the label of “AI garbage” that people give it. However, if we completely reject it for that reason, we would be missing one of its core values.

The usefulness of AI may precisely lie in its uniform and often obvious alternative perspective.

Asking directly, "What have I missed?" can be very helpful. Since AI tends to agree with me, I explicitly ask it to raise any objections: "Review this content and tell me what I've missed, tell me where I'm wrong." AI is so straightforward and ordinary, yet it actually represents the core value here. I'm often surprised by the key points I've missed and the perspectives I've overlooked.

Even if AI doesn't notice anything you've overlooked, looking at the issue from a different perspective can be very helpful and can help you strengthen your argument. In that way, you can say, "Yes, I have considered these factors, and that's why my view on this issue is more reasonable."

In this regard, AI can also help you prepare for discussions with your colleagues. Since many people ask AI to draft their arguments, it is very valuable to get a glimpse of the other party's viewpoint in advance.

So, no, I won't let AI do the argumentation for me, but I will always look for another perspective in my own work – no matter where it comes from. It's extremely useful to have such a tool at my disposal in an instant.

2. Let AI help you summarize the dense information.

Before the emergence of AI, we've all encountered colleagues who tend to share far more information than is necessary. Nowadays, with some people making extensive use of AI, this situation can indeed become overwhelming to handle.

You ask a simple question, but end up getting a bunch of noise generated by AI. When AI is allowed to run unchecked, it might be the tool that loves over-explanation the most. What you end up with is often a seven-page-long reply.

When I encounter such long-winded speeches, I’ve learned that there are actually only two ways to deal with them. I can, and often do, ask the speaker to start over: What exactly does this mean? Can you summarize your point in two or three sentences? Sometimes I even ask, with a hint of sarcasm, to send me to the “AI garbage version.”

Another approach is to let AI summarize it, whether the content was written by the AI tool or by some verbose colleague. What’s important is that I won’t consider the AI summary as a complete explanation, but it can help me understand the key points. Then I can go back through the original pile of replies to find those key points.

Yes, it's somewhat a circular argument after all. After all, why not simply let the two AI systems discuss it among themselves? Don't drag me into it. But in a world where it seems difficult for everyone to get straight to the point, any tool that can cut through the noise is very welcome, and AI is indeed strong in this regard.

3. Let AI help you with the task.

Similarly, AI has a very strong ability, which is organization. Such repetitive tasks—classification, filtering, archiving—are precisely the strengths of most AI systems.

However, I am cautious about allowing AI to automatically perform filtering or archiving tasks without my supervision. I would never allow the AI system to automatically send emails, text messages, or files without my careful review. But I often have AI help me organize the mountain of clutter.

I recently switched to a new computer system, so I asked AI to help me review the content that needed to be migrated over. I discovered that I had accumulated a bunch of miscellaneous items over the course of several decades. Just by having a complete list, I found dozens of programs, files, and settings from GB; 90% of them I ended up not taking with me when I migrated.

So, if you have 8,000 emails in your inbox, or if a certain document folder has become overly cluttered, why not let the AI system take a look for you? Don’t just simply tell it to “deal with them.” Your judgment is still necessary.

To be more precise, let it first provide you with a review opinion and another perspective. After you review it, perhaps you will find, just like I have, that AI may be more outstanding in deletion than in creation.

So, when your company launches the next new AI tool, why not use these tools in ways that benefit you? AI can help you see things from a different perspective, identify the key points amidst the flood of information, and clean up the clutter. I have already adopted AI and use it very carefully, and I encourage everyone to do the same.