11 things we’ve learned about using AI together

AI is changing the game across industry sectors around the world. While some companies are struggling to upskill their workforce in this supercharged environment, Intuit is staying a step ahead. Shannon Orr, Intuit’s assistant general counsel for AI, says, “We want to be innovators. We want to experiment.” That’s why we’re encouraging our employees to explore a wide variety of use cases with AI and generative AI (GenAI). Shannon and three Intuit employees from product management and marketing recently shared their AI experiences. From their stories, here are eleven things we’ve learned together about applying AI to enhance your day-to-day productivity and creativity at work and in your life–and to do so responsibly.

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1. Ask the Right Questions: Using GenAI effectively requires understanding its capabilities and limitations. Learning to ask the right questions and design effective prompts is key to unlocking the potential of GenAI. As Danny Ortega, principal research strategist, notes, “When it’s not valuable, it’s not because it can’t be helpful. It’s because I’m asking the wrong question.”
   
   
2. Keep the Human in the Loop: Despite advancements in AI, there’s still a strong need for human oversight. Our detailed understanding and critical thinking can verify the outputs and assess its weaknesses. Senior marketing manager, Bri Amarillas, describes it as her “creative collaborator.” Maggie Hu, AI platform product manager, adds, “I’m a strong believer and advocate for human in the loop. AI is in the assistant role.”
   
   
3. Be Mindful about Data Quality: As a user of AI systems, you’re placing your trust and confidence in the technology. Be mindful that results to your prompts can be incorrect, biased, or harmful. GenAI is capable of amazing things, but it still needs maturing, especially if the data that trains the large language models is limited or skewed. Maggie says, “Garbage in equals garbage out.” This is another reason why it’s important to critically think about the results. It may be worth taking some extra time to validate what you’re seeing with a subject matter expert. 
   
   
4. Consider Ethical Implications: Ethical considerations are paramount when using or deploying AI. For Intuit, this includes an established set of responsible AI principles, including fairness, accountability, transparency, privacy, and security. These values guide how Intuit responsibly operates and scales our AI-driven expert platform. Shannon explains, “The future of our work lies on figuring out how we can can ethically and responsibly work and improve these tools to work on more high impact things, like financial decisions and legal decisions.”
   
   
5. Improve Your Communication Skills: You can use GenAI to better connect with others and boost your communication effectiveness. Use it as a useful communication tool to help you analyze your speech patterns, refine your words, or practice difficult conversations. We’ve heard from employees using GenAI for translation into another language and/or to adjust the tone of a message to be more empathetic.
   
   
6. Summarize Information: Looking to boost your productivity? One of the most common GenAI use cases is to condense information. This can save employees across almost every industry time and energy. “For me, generative AI and LLMs have been a huge unlock,” Danny Ortega says. “I grew up dyslexic. It’s never been easy to process characters, never in my life. Even at this point, it’s not easy for me to sit down and write page after page after page. It’s not taking all of the weight off. I still have to think critically and edit and make sure what what I’m creating is of a certain quality. But I’m no longer hindered by this thing that has been holding me down for many years.”
   
   
7. Say Goodbye to Note-taking: Imagine a world where you never have to take meeting notes again. It’s here. Many AI notetaking tools can do this tedious or complex task for you. These assistants can even summarize the discussion, identify speakers, and assign action items. With these tools working in the background, you can be a more present, active listener. “We can focus on handling really difficult decisions and making important choices, rather than taking notes,” Shannon offers.
   
   
8. Uncover New Perspectives: AI can provide different perspectives and insights that you might not have previously considered. Danny recommends using it to refine your personal story. For your career, this could be a game-changer. Consider trying some of these: craft a bio, update a LinkedIn profile, write a resume or cover letter, introduce yourself in a job interview, or compile performance reviews.
   
   
9. Stay Curious: The world of AI is vast, constantly evolving, and will only get more sophisticated. Stay curious, keep learning, and don’t be afraid to experiment with new tools and technologies. Many companies, including Intuit, are hiring with this in mind. Shannon says, “We’re looking for the brightest minds to help us think through these novel questions because there isn’t an answer yet for a lot of these things.”
   
   
10. Embrace New Skills: The career landscape is always changing with new technologies, some more disruptive than others. Maggie says, “Be prepared, embrace it, and commit to learning new things.” Many jobs will transform and  others will be created. Consider how careers like machine learning engineering or data science are relatively new in the world of tech. “This is augmenting what you’re capable of as a human,” Danny assures.
    
    
11. Just Get Started: Everyone has to start somewhere. There are plenty of videos, articles, and online courses to learn about GenAI and large language models (LLMs). Watch the full webinar to hear our specific recommendations. And take Danny’s advice: “Whether you have the fear or not, don’t let it stop you, because you will be missing an important moment right now to explore.”

Are you a job seeker looking for a new career opportunity? Intuit is hiring for jobs, including jobs in AI. Plus, Intuit was recently recognized on Fortune’s 50 AI Innovators list! Sign up for our Talent Community to hear about our latest jobs, news, events, and more. Join us as we build an AI-driven expert platform and solve our customers’ biggest financial challenges.

The views, information, or opinions expressed by the panelists are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Intuit.