In the popular press, I keep reading that Generative AI allows knowledge workers to produce higher-quality results more quickly.
They cite well-executed research by prestigious institutions to support these claims, for example, Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality, published by The Wharton School. The popular press reports a 40% increase in quality and a 25% reduction in time. While this is sort of close to what the paper says about the tasks where it helps; the paper also says that on other tasks, the work product was 19% worse. The popular press articles generally neglect, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story.
So, it is critically important to know where and when generative AI is helping you and where it would be hurting you.
Over the past 30-plus years, I have revied thousands, perhaps tens-of-thousands, presentations, article drafts, book drafts, and other non-fiction works where the created expended great amounts of thought, effort, and time. My most frequent substantive comment is that the quality of their thinking, project, or company is much better than the presentation or other embodiment that I am seeing. That is to say that their words are selling them short.
This led to the Hidden Gems checklist of impressive things that founders fail to say, e.g., having received tens of millions of dollars of non-dilutive funding.
Recently, I have been reading works that are generative AI-augmented. Such works are even more prone to leave out what is unique, special and valuable about your work. Perhaps that is because your novel thoughts are less likely to occur frequently in its training set.
Often, the AI normalized away the specialness in a way such that new readers will have no idea that there is anything special there, whereas the insiders won’t notice that it is missing.
It is always important to have “fresh eyes” look at your writings and presentations.
If Generative AI has “cleaned it up” for you, it is even more important.
