5 Ways I Use AI In My Business… and 3 Ways I Won’t
Ever wonder how we (the royal we, of course) use AI over here at Bright Side Writing, here’s your answer. This isn’t a pro-AI or anti-AI stance; rather, it’s a rundown of how and why I use it in my business…and which tasks are always done by a human (me!)
Five Ways I Use AI as a Health Writer
Basic questions
If it’s something that just needs a quick answer, AI is on it. This already happens most of the time when you reach for that Google search bar, but I frequently use generative AI when I want a more robust answer, or to have a back-and-forth conversation about a topic.
Jumping off point for research
I find that the Consensus – an AI tool that specifically provides answers based on academic research papers – to be extremely helpful when beginning my research on a piece. It links directly to the specific papers it uses in its claims, so that I can find science-based, factual evidence quickly.
Ideating
AI does a great job making lists, offering suggestions, and tipping me off on where I might be missing a key point. I’ll use it to bounce questions and ideas back and forth.
Finding Sources for Interviews or Cold LOIs
A big part of my job is interviewing the right experts for the piece I’m writing. I sometimes ask AI to make suggestions about the type of expert I could look for, or even specific people. Likewise, I often ask it to make lists of potential clients. This gives me a quick starting point for outreach and marketing.
Outlining
Once a piece is starting to pull together, I’ll share my notes and background research, give AI the word count and purpose of the piece, and ask it to make an outline. Sometimes it’s a great outline…and sometimes it needs work. Either way, this gives me an organized head start and helps me to nail down which points I want to include in my piece, and which I want to leave out.
Three Ways I Don’t Use AI As a Health Writer
Actual writing
This is the big one, folks! There will always be a real human behind the keyboard at Bright Side Writing. AI can’t match my insight, background, and intuitive understanding of the human experience. That’s the little something that makes my work stand out (as noted here!)
Posts
I see the appeal of having AI write your social media posts. I really do. It’s a basic, repetitive task, and AI writes posts that are usually good enough, but…where’s the personality? The pizazz?? The razzle-dazzle??? AI-generated posts all tend to sound the same, in my opinion. I prefer that the posts I share represent me and my business authentically, which means I write them myself.
Checking others’ work!
It does not make ANY sense to me whatsoever that we use AI to check for AI. It does a bad job, too! Not kidding you, I had AI write an experimental post, then put it into four different AI detectors. The percentage of “AI-generated text” that each detected were: 32%, 67%, and the real kicker: 0% and 100%. That’s quite the margin of error. AI doesn’t seem good at detecting AI, so I won’t use it to check others’ work - that’s just unfair.
How do you (or don’t you) use AI? Spout your big opinions (or, you know, contact me if you need a writer) here.
AI could never! Here I am circa 2020, all suited up to go into a COVID room. You just can’t get this level of authenticity without, well…authentic experiences.
