Headlines You Should Know

How to Keep AI From Being a Buzzword

Seasoned communications professionals’ eyes gloss over at overused, empty jargon like “strategic direction,” “value-added,” “synergy,” and “game-changer.” A new one is quickly joining the list: “AI-first.”

As many companies rush to brand themselves with this label, communicators face the challenge of discerning when this term becomes just another buzzword. It’s crucial to strike a balance, ensuring that terms like “AI-first” are backed by genuine integration and innovation, rather than serving as mere marketing fluff.

An accounting firm, for instance, wouldn’t call itself a “calculator-first” establishment — you’d just assume everyone there is using whatever technology is available to efficiently get the job done. AI will soon be table stakes in the business world, just like calculators are for math. By all means, highlight how you’re using AI and quantify its benefits, but without that clear picture, you risk AI becoming the next empty phrase that isn’t a, well, value add.

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Tips and Tricks

 Make clearer what AI doesn’t know

What’s happening: AI tools speak so authoritatively that it makes it hard to pinpoint the stuff that’s made up. With the ability to tarnish your or your organization’s reputation, AI writing shouldn’t go unchecked.

Why it’s important: Sometimes hallucinations can have hefty consequences, like in the legal world, where lawyers have been fined because ChatGPT fabricated cases in their filings. According to one study, “hallucination rates range from 69% to 88% in response to specific legal queries for state-of-the-art language models.”

Try this: When prompting, you can reduce hallucinations by asking the AI tool to call out what it doesn’t know. For example, adding “put in brackets [[like this]] anything you’re unsure of” will create a visual element that catches your eye in outputs. It’s hard to quantify just how effective this solution is, but it’s a good way to highlight areas that should be checked twice for accuracy.

Quote of the Week

“AI faces two interrelated futures. First, technology continues to improve and is increasingly used, having major consequences for productivity and employment. It can be put to both good and bad uses. In the second future, the adoption of AI is constrained by the limitations of the technology. Regardless of which future unfolds, governments are increasingly concerned.”

— Ray Perrault and Jack Clark, Co-directors of the AI Index in the AI Index Report 2024