THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE AI PEOPLE

KEEPING AI CREATIVE, SAFE, AND FUN

Starting to use generative AI? Great! AI has great power, possibilities and vulnerabilities, all at the same time. Here are seven habits of how effective users of AI keep it creative, safe, and fun.

  1. THEY USE AI FOR GOOD. AI confidently produces output that’s powerful and provocative, scary and stunning, banal and biased, additive and disruptive, smart and stupid. Effective people AI know its output contains dark and light. They choose to use it for good.

  2. THEY TREAT AI AS A GOLDEN RETRIEVER. AI engines are like a golden retriever: they’ll fetch whatever you tell them to. And like a dog, if it doesn’t find the stick you threw, it brings back something else. Effective AI people know this and treat AI’s output as a suggestion, a guess, a prediction. They treat AI like a golden retriever.

  3. THEY CHECK AND CITE AI’S WORK. Sometimes, a golden retriever brings back someone else’s stick. Effective AI users know this and never AI’s output unmodified, unchecked, or uncited. It’s a feature of generative AI that it makes up answers the best it can. Use that power for creativity and don’t blindly trust its answers. And if you do use an AI-generated image, audio, or video, cite it as a source, just like in the real world.

  4. THEY NEVER USE INTERNAL DATA WITH A PUBLIC AI. Never use internal, private, or corporate data, text, code, or IP with a public AI service (ChatGPT, Bing, Perplexity) without checking its policy and use of your data first. It might be ok: most companies are installing private LLMs to protect data. But if you don’t know, don’t do it.

  5. THEY EMBRACE AI BIAS. AI's bias doesn’t surprise effective AI people; they embrace it. They expect flawed, inaccurate, biased, misleading, politically motivated answers and use them to fuel their unique point of view.

  6. THEY USE AI LIKE A DOLPHIN. Effective AI people ask questions over and over and over again. Like a dolphin, each AI answer is like a leap from the water. They breathe it in. They look around. They ask a new question and dive again. Each dive explores a new curiosity. 1️⃣

  7. THEY LEARN THE RULES. Effective users of AI understand copyright laws. The attempt to read The EU AI Act, the in-process regulation of AI in the EU. If you’re unfamiliar with any of this, read this. Effective AI people know that if protected in the real world, it’s protected in the AI world. They read internal corporate AI policies. They read about how their AI was trained. They read, understand, and question AI policies like Google’s or OpenAI’s.

About These Habits (by Mark Palmer)

My day job is to create AI and data products. In my workshop, The Generative AI Growth Mindset, I also teach non-technical people how to use generative AI. These habits come from answering questions from people using AI to become better teachers, doctors, writers, lawyers, and parents.

Like AI itself, the list is evolving. With each comment and each question you ask, I tweak it. To learn more, comment, or contribute on Substack, LinkedIn, or join my next workshop, register here.

Footnotes and references

1️⃣ I learned the “learn like a dolphin” idea from Adam