This is primarily about personal use of AI. There’s a lot to be said about corporate use; for at least some of that, I’ve linked to the April/May issue of Fortune magazine, below in Notes; it has multiple articles from various perspectives on what companies are doing and the challenges.
There’s no question that AI is problematic, for a whole host of reasons. Energy requirements, water requirements, copyright issues, hallucinations – it goes on and on. I have colleagues who flatly refuse to consider using AI in any way, shape, or form, and I understand that.
But.
AI is here, and it’s not going away. The genie is out of the bottle and the bottle is gone; the cat’s out of the bag and the bag has vanished. Pick whatever metaphor you like, the fact remains that AI is here to stay. Governments, nationally or at the state level, may or may not put barriers around it, but at this point, that’s very much up in the air.
AI slop has become an all-too-prevalent thing, up to and including wildly inappropriate images created by certain people (I know you know what I’m talking about). Whether we use AI or not, we all need to be careful about what we see and read, how we react to it, and whether or not we share it on. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather not be responsible for sharing anything that’s not real, but pretends to be.
Back to my point.
I can take a hammer and build something sloppy and unsafe, or I can take that hammer and build something beautiful and useful.
AI is a tool. Crazy-powerful, sometimes dangerous, but a tool nonetheless.
So. Do you use AI?
It can be a terrific thought partner. It’s great for bouncing ideas around, especially if you explicitly tell it to be honest and not placate you – they can be ridiculously people-pleasing. Obviously you’ll always check the facts (right?), since we know they’re not reliable. But using it to help you dig deeper into your own ideas can be remarkably rewarding. I repeat: your own ideas!
Properly trained, it can be helpful in supporting many types of work. The emphasis, of course, is on “properly trained”; we’ve all run into the dreadful online chatbots that are completely unhelpful, not to mention AIs that answer the phone and trap us in endless loops.
I could go on, but I think you get my point.
Play with it. Try out several of them. After spending time with both ChatGPT and Claude, I’ve settled on Claude – for political reasons (I appreciate Anthropic’s stance against fully-autonomous drone strikes and widespread domestic surveillance) as well as for its much-less-sycophantic approach and MUCH less verbose responses. ChatGPT has a tendency to go on and on (and on), and constantly asked if I wanted it to perform tasks I specifically told it to remember that I didn’t want it to do. Claude, on the other hand, helps me think things through without trying to take over and with many fewer words or bullet points. It even stops asking questions when it thinks we’re done – including, at one point, literally telling me to “shoo!”
Whatever you decide, be intentional – whether that’s which one to use, or to use none at all.
Okay, I know I said at the beginning that this is primarily abour personal AI use. But I hear you asking: what about jobs?!
There are a lot of question marks around the extent to which AI is going to blow up the job market. Fortune magazine’s latest issue, as I mentioned, has several sometimes-contradictory articles on the impact of AI in the workplace and what it will, and won’t, be able to do. (Link below.)
The short answer: AI is disruptive technology, which means it will disrupt at least some of the job market. But bear in mind that the media lives and dies by clicks and subscriptions – which means it tends to focus on the “EEK” and “AACK” stories. In general, it appears many organizations are not yet getting the return on investment they’d anticipated, and some organizations are taking an appropriately cautious and moderate approach.
And yes, I know there are companies who have laid off people and claimed it’s because of AI. That’s going to happen. Some jobs are going to go away. New jobs will be created. This is what always happens with tech innovations.
Is AI going to have a bigger impact? Probably. But it’s not going away. So we all need to figure out how to use it – and how to co-exist with it – instead of freaking out about it.
NOTES
My friend and colleague Jeff Toister has just released a book on AI in customer service (link below), explaining how it can be supportive and helpful instead of maddening and obstructive. Link to Human Service: the skills AI can’t replace: https://www.toistersolutions.com/books The book advocates for certain types of AI use as helpful and productive, while also explaining where it should not be used.
Fortune magazine’s current issue (April/May): https://fortune.com/package/april-may-2026/ Yes, paywalled. For whatever it’s worth, they’re currently running a $1/month special on the digital edition.
One of their articles, “9 reasons AI isn’t going to take your job (yet)” is relevant to the “but my job!” concerns. This should be un-paywalled: https://fortune.com/2026/04/01/ai-layoffs-automation-productivity-finance-employment-investors-ceos/?utm_campaign=social_share
Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash