BOSS put it to use, entering the prompt “How can AI make us more productive at work?”
Canva produced a seven-slide presentation entitled “Boosting Productivity with ChatGPT and AI”, including five key slides that each had a different heading, and at least one sentence of text. The seventh slide read: “Thank you for giving us the opportunity to show how ChatGPT and AI can boost productivity. Let’s work smarter, not harder!”
The content is basic, sometimes inaccurate and no more than a starting point. But it will save you time on formatting.
Another option is AI-powered presentation software Beautiful.ai. Paid users of ChatGPT can also use software add-ons called plugins such as SmartSlides, a service launched by Pounder’s colleague, Leopold Lucas, which created 20,000 presentations in its first two weeks. (You can enable plugins by accessing ChatGPT’s settings menu.)
2. Have better meetings
To get the most out of his meetings, Hockey Stick Advisory founder Bryan Williams uses AI-powered software Avoma to automatically prepare meeting agendas and record and transcribe video calls.
“It then gives a condensed summary [of the transcript] after the call,” Williams says.
The app also allows users to easily share snippets of the call, or bookmark parts of the conversation in real time, making it easier to revisit key points in future.
“There’s always an agenda,” Williams says of his meetings.
“There’s a prebuilt template set up for the call, [Avoma] captures the meeting notes for me, and I can send [those notes] out automatically. I can have a direct conversation with someone without [taking notes]. And I can also send out proposals or engagements in the meeting.”
Similar software options include Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai.
Tech Council of Australia chief executive Kate Pounder says AI will take care of our routine and repetitive tasks. Oscar Colman
3. Use ChatGPT in Google Sheets and Docs
Williams also harnesses the power of ChatGPT when working in Google Sheets or Google Docs. Among other things, he uses it to generate ideas, make travel plans, create customer personas and draft outlines for presentations.
“So rather than do a prompt on ChatGPT and say, ‘Hey, can you write me a blog article?’ or ‘Can you create a keynote presentation?’ or whatever, if you’re accessing [it in Google Sheets or Google Doc], you can do that at scale,” Williams says, adding that the tool’s output always needs editing.
“Rather than go from one [prompt] to [one answer], you can go from one [prompt] to 100 [answers] straightaway.”
Users can do the same by downloading one of several “GPT for Sheets and Docs” extensions.
To do this, open a blank Google Doc or Google Sheet, click “Extensions” in the toolbar and select “Add-ons” in the subsequent dropdown menu. Search “GPT for Sheets and Docs” and install one of the available extensions.
Next, set up an account with OpenAi and head to https://platform.openai.com/account/api-keys once you have set one up. Click “create new secret key”, copy this key, then head back to your Google Sheet or Doc. Once there, click on “Extensions” in the toolbar, select “GPT for Sheets and Docs” in the subsequent dropdown, and then, finally, click “set API key” and paste your key in the available slot.
Depending on the model you use, the company charges between $0.0015 and $0.12 per word over the free limit, including both inputs and outputs.
Several online guides explain how you can use the tool once you have downloaded it. AI adviser Allie Miller says in one such article: “With one click and drag, I can generate custom emails for hundreds or thousands of team members or customers.”
Flying Fox Ventures co-founder Rachel Neumann (left) says The Mintable can help managers deliver more effective feedback.
4. Give better feedback
Giving feedback is notoriously difficult. Managers have to strike a balance between providing constructive criticism and keeping staff on side, and they often miss the mark.
Which is why Rachael Neumann, founding partner of start-up investment fund Flying Fox Ventures, recommends managers use AI-powered The Mintable to find the right words.
Neumann’s fund has invested in the company, which has created a free Slack extension that gives users “really sharp, highly effective and highly appropriate feedback”.
“It just walks you through a few prompts, which is quite cathartic and almost therapeutic in its process, and then it will spit out a very tight few liners that you can copy and paste and send across to someone [who you] want to give feedback to,” Neumann says.
“Effectively, it’s capturing what you’re trying to portray in a kind of manager best practice.”
UNSW associate professor of regulation and governance Rob Nicholls says ChatGPT can also be used for this purpose.
“You can end up with emails or communications that have a much better balance of tone than the immediate one you might want to scribble off,” Nicholls tells BOSS.
5. Research and generate new content
Neumann and her employees also use ChatGPT for research and content generation, whether it be writing a marketing plan, coming up with quotes for a media release, or conducting due diligence on potential investment opportunities.
“There’s always a lot of desktop research where you want to understand market trends, historical trends, how a certain industry is set up, whether it’s highly fragmented or consolidated,” Neumann says.
“That used to be a bunch of Google searches. [But] now we can put some really strong prompts into ChatGPT, and it can get us the most accurate answer in a really tight paragraph without having to go to a number of different sources of information.”
Neumann is quick to point out that she and her colleagues always verify ChatGPT’s output and question how it fits into their “investment thesis”. But the tool essentially takes on a lot of the information-gathering so that she can spend more time processing and analysing what it finds.
Responsible Metaverse Alliance founder Catriona Wallace also recommends Jasper.ai for business content writing, as does AirTree’s Lombard. Users can fine-tune the software’s output by uploading a written style guide or providing links to their past work.
“It’s really well regarded,” Wallace says of Jasper. “It was one of the first out of the gates in content generation.”
6. Brainstorm and collaborate
Finally, Williams recommends trying the digital whiteboard Miro, which is designed to facilitate meetings, complex workflows and brainstorming.
“Picture everything you’d write on a whiteboard, right? It just captures [that information] with sticky notes and flows ... and they’ve got a really massive template library to bring it together,” Williams says, adding that Miro exploded in popularity during the pandemic when in-person meetings were off the table.
The company launched an AI feature earlier this year that leverages the same technology underpinning ChatGPT to generate ideas for its users.
“You can now say, ‘Give me 20 ideas for building AI tools’, and it will autopopulate ideas and bring them [into your Miro workspace] straightaway,” Williams says.
“So many tools are evolving ... you need to stay attuned to what’s going on because it’s only getting better, and it’s helping people save time, make more money and save costs.”
It should be noted that the brave new world of AI comes with caveats.
Sites such as futurepedia.io allow you to explore the massive range of AI tools already available. But be sure to check your company’s risk, compliance, privacy and cybersecurity policies before using any of them, Lombard warns. For example, some companies don’t want their employees sharing snippets of their code on ChatGPT as the information contained in their prompts could help the tool answer questions for rival firms.
And sharing confidential information should be off limits too, says Nicholls. If you’re unsure what you should and shouldn’t share with ChatGPT, he recommends asking the following question: “Is the output of the ChatGPT session a document that would normally be regarded as confidential by your business?”
If the answer’s yes, then don’t use it.
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