Use AI in your firm, but use it for lower-value labour and for expediency. Don’t use it to replace your thinking, your perspective, your special sauce. The latter is why clients hire you; it’s what makes you unique.
I’m sure many of you are familiar with the study MIT did on the neural and behavioral consequences of LLM-assisted essay writing. The summary? “While LLMs offer immediate convenience, our findings highlight potential cognitive costs. Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.”
The MIT study is the first indication that over-reliance on LLMs, instead of our brains, leads to underperformance. Underperformance is why clients fire firms.
(And I don’t think we need MIT to tell us this – you can see and feel the difference, the genericizing effect, when AI is used for the wrong things.)
So, when it comes to AI in your firm:
- Use it to spellcheck and proofread; don’t use it to write.
- Use it to speed up research; don’t use it to create the research-backed strategy.
- Use it to validate or invalidate your ideas; don’t use it to come up with them.
And so forth.
How you think, how you solve problems, how you communicate: these are the DNA strands that make up your firm. They are the traits that make you unique and differentiate you from your competitors, and the reason clients choose you. Don’t mindlessly cannibalize that uniqueness for convenience, or you’ll become Just Another Firm™.