NEW WORKSHOPS ADDED

PHIL SIMON

THE WORLD’S LEADING INDEPENDENT WORKPLACE COLLABORATION & TECH EXPERT

Collaboration, AI, and the Long Game

Thoughts on giving people a pass.
May | 5 | 2023

May | 5 | 2023
}

DALL·E prompt: stubborn executive computer

Your department or employer has embraced Slack, Microsoft Teams, or another internal collaboration hub. You regularly send your colleagues direct messages. You frequently post messages in channels. Some contain brief videos that you record to save time. As you type a new message, you see the following prompts:

  • Elaine doesn’t typically respond to messages containing more than 100 words. Consider calling her or scheduling time with her instead.
  • Despite being a member of [channel name], Kramer isn’t active on it. Send him a DM instead if you want him to respond.
  • Members of [channel name] are far more likely to watch a video than read a long message.
  • Did you know that George asked this question a year ago in [channel name] and Jerry answered it? Click here to view it.

All of these scenarios sound far-fetched, right?

A few years ago, sure.

Today, however, not so much.

Generative AI is coming to collaboration and communication applications. (Exhibit A: the recently announced Slack GPT.) Make no mistake: As I predicted in the final chapter of Reimagining Collaboration, these technologies can and will immensely improve how we work. They will save us a great deal of time and help us prioritize what we do.

Under the Hood

Large language models underpin today’s crop of robust generative AI tools, but LLMs don’t learn by themselves. They require data. Lots and lots of data.

And here’s why it’s essential that all—yes, all—employees communicate via internal collaboration hubs as much as possible: More data in Slack, MS Teams, Zoom, and the ilk results in deeper learning. LLMs get smarter. In turn, they will make better connections and suggestions down the road.

Simon Says: Think bigger.

Every internal e-mail, text, WhatsApp message, and communication outside of the hub represents a missed opportunity to train and improve LLM. (Remember that GPT stands for generative pre-trained transformer.) Over time, these omissions add up. Recommendations won’t be as relevant—and some will be grossly inaccurate.

Think about that next time people start conversations via e-mail or divert an existing conversation from the hub to an inbox.

Go Deeper

How Fancy Text Helps Me Identify Spam

ike millions of people, I've been off Twitter for months now. I now spend much of the time that I used to spend tweeting and reading tweets on a different social network: LinkedIn. I suspect that I'm hardly alone here. A second-order effect of my...

Appearance on Turn the Lens

Jeff Frick recently had me on his show Turn the Lens to talk about The Nine. It's among my favorite talks and podcasts about the new book. Enjoy.

On AI, Priorities, and Product Development

Introduction One of the chief benefits of Agile software development methods is flexibility. Compared to the Waterfall method, Scrum and its ilk allow teams to respond quickly when the world changes. Like it did on November 30, 2022—the day ChatGPT dropped. Within a...

The Notification Struggle Is Real

Earlier this week, I wrote about my struggles to get Notion to stop sending me irrelevant notifications. As it turns out, my travails aren't limited to my favorite low-code/no-code tool. Todoist Travails For nearly a decade, I've been using Todoist to track my...

Receive my musings, news, and rants in your inbox as soon as they publish.

 

Blog E Collaboration E Collaboration, AI, and the Long Game

Next & Previous Posts

0 Comments