by Ross Garner
Last week, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke made headlines with an internal memo advocating for ‘reflexive AI usage’ across the business. For Lütke, using AI tools is now a ‘fundamental expectation’, to be measured in performance and peer review questionnaires. And, most strikingly, teams looking to hire will need to demonstrate why an AI can’t perform the role instead.
As this approach to AI adoption becomes more widespread, HR and L&D teams are going to have to develop a deep understanding of these tools and their capabilities.
And they’re going to have to support managers and team members as they transition to a working world where AI tools act as a personal assistant, a coach and a colleague.
What does this look like in practice?
It’s useful to think of AI use as a spectrum. At one end, there’s total automation: the AI completes tasks without any human involvement.
At the other, the human must perform a task completely on their own because leveraging an AI in that moment is either inappropriate or not possible.
Between these two extremes, the extent to which an AI can enhance performance varies.
1. AI anticipates tasks and completes them automatically
This version of AI use is, in some ways, the easiest to adopt. You probably already embrace it, without thinking about it. For example, when your email inbox filters mail for you, or when your learning platform recommends a piece of content.
When we produce The Mindtools L&D Podcast, the platform we use transcribes our conversation, writes show notes, creates video clips for social media and cleans up our audio. All without any human intervention. The AI pre-empts our needs.
These kinds of automation are what Tobi Lütke is encouraging when he asks his teams to justify why they need to hire a person instead of using AI.
2. AI completes a task when I ask it to
The most visible example of an AI in popular use is ChatGPT, but others include Co-Pilot from Microsoft and Gemini from Google.
You ask these tools to write you an email, draft a policy, analyze a document or create an image. I used one of them to get feedback on this blog post and to polish my draft.
The AI then completes the task for you, and your role is to evaluate the output and determine if it meets your needs.
3. AI helps me complete my tasks (in the flow of work)
One step further than asking an AI to complete a task for you is to work with an AI, in the moment, to extend your human capabilities. This use of AI is often referred to as ‘augmentation’. In the literature, people who use AI like this are often referred to as ‘cyborgs’, because the human and the machine are completely intertwined.
Examples of such tools include Grammarly to help you write; Zoom’s AI Companion identifies follow-up actions during calls; PowerPoint recommends lay-outs when you insert an image.
In each case, the AI extends your existing abilities: making you a better writer, stakeholder or graphic designer. You’re able to perform your role better or faster than you would have done without support.
Another example here is in decision-making, where AI coaches can help you think through issues and come up with a solution. Our new Ask M: Coach feature is just one such example, extending coaching support from the privileged few who can afford it to anyone who asks.
4. AI tells me how to do the task
At some point, however, you will still have to complete tasks on your own. This is particularly true for those sensitive interpersonal tasks that make up so much of our work.
Think conducting an interview, providing feedback, having a difficult conversation or pitching to a potential client.
It would be awkward or inappropriate to refer to an AI tool in the moment, but AI can help you prepare by providing advice or pointing you to useful resources.
Again, our Ask M: Coach feature can help you prepare for these encounters by providing advice that’s highly contextualized to your immediate need. Just type in what’s on your mind, and the AI will pull together a suggestion based on our content, then link to videos, infographics and self-assessments to help you prepare.
5. AI helps me develop a skill
Finally, we move on from task-based support to skills development.
A skill is something that you get better at through practice. But, the opposite is also true. If an AI regularly completes a task for you, and you stop doing these tasks yourself, you tend to get worse.
The technical term for this is ‘cognitive offloading’, and we all do it all the time. Examples could be using a calculator to solve maths problems or a calendar to keep track of appointments.
This isn’t a problem until you’re stripped of support: like when you use Google Maps to find your way back to your hotel every night, but then get lost when your phone battery dies.
At work, AI tools can help you develop key skills by providing practice opportunities. This most commonly comes up in those areas where you need to be able to interact with others to achieve a goal.
Examples include PowerPoint’s ‘Rehearse with Coach’ feature, which provides feedback on your presentation skills both as you’re presenting and as a summary at the end.
Or our own AI Conversations tool, which helps you practice having difficult conversations with a variety of different characters so that you’re better equipped to do this for real.
The time to tinker is over
In his memo, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke mentions that he originally encouraged all employees to ‘tinker’ with AI tools. To play, to experiment, and to discover what’s possible.
But now he acknowledges that this doesn’t go far enough, writing: ‘The call to tinker with it was the right one, but it was too much of a suggestion.’
At Shopify, using AI is now an expectation. How long until it’s an expectation in your organization?
Those organizations who embrace AI have an immediate advantage over those that don’t. And L&D teams have a key role to play in helping colleagues prepare, play, and share.
Do you know where to begin with embracing AI within your team, or help you to work more effectively? Our new AI-powered Ask M: Coach feature is now available in our Content Hub to guide you through questions and challenges like these.
You can also speak to our experts for further information on the solutions Mindtools have to support your organization.
