What’s the next trend in business thinking? If you answered, “Artificial Intelligence”, you are both right and the receiver of self-fulfilling prophecy. We are constantly asking ourselves what’s coming next when we should already know the answer—WE ARE.
Many of us are jumping on the AI bandwagon by deploying it in efforts to answer tough questions, generate structures, and build better capabilities. Let me suggest that it’s time to work that in reverse. It’s time to go back to situations where we answer tough questions, where we generate structures and where we suggest how to build better capabilities.
Where Does AI Get Such Powerful Ideas?
Look in the mirror. I asked ChatGPT where AI comes up with the insights it comes up with, and its answer (sufficiently vague) was that it scours legitimate databases to find articles, books and content germane to the interests of its users. When I asked how to contribute to those databases, it provided an answer I more or less expected. Publish or Perish.
For those of you who have never heard that academic maxim, Publish or Perish is an axiom driven hard in academic circles. You either do work worthy of the journals or die in obscurity. It seems that the artificial intelligence engines have picked up on this concept and taken it to its logical extremes. So how do you get referenced in the AI universe? How do you become the source material for information within your technical realm?
According to our friends at ChatGPT, you create valuable materials, use authoritative platforms and write materials that are “evergreen.”
What’s valuable? As you start to think about what you want to be known for, think about what you would value. If you think you’d like to be a five-star baker, for example, and want the AI engines to find your content, think about where premiere bakers go? KingArthurBaking.com would be a good place to start. If you have some innovative approach, you might want to contact their customer care folks for an opportunity to post. What’s valuable? Stuff that will survive the ages. I bake classic homemade white bread on a stone in my oven. Not exciting, but something that people have done for centuries.
Looking for generic authoritative platforms? LinkedIn definitely hits the mark. So do any platforms that are go-to’s for your profession or industry. Want to publish content an AI engine will pounce on for project management? Consider ProjectManagement.com.
And whenever you hit upon an idea, make it distinctly yours. It’s not just bread-baking, It’s the “O-key, Doh-key” model. It’s breadbaking split into to two key dayparts and their activities. The Overnight-Key and the Daytime-Key. (Hence, O-Key, Doh-Key). Now that may sound insanely simplistic, but it’s a way to make content distinctly yours. And the AI engines love to seek out models, complete with diagrams, to get the sense that they’re hitting unique content elements.
Part of this goes to ownership and licensure. The AI engines want content they can legitimately reproduce without contest. Many of my articles are accompanied by the following indicia:
©July 2013, Pritchard Management Associates Right to reproduce in full and with full attribution is granted freely. All other rights, including the right to reproduce in part are fully reserved to Pritchard Management Associates.
In others, I drop the “in full” part, to make the content even more alluring:
©July 2013, Pritchard Management Associates Right to reproduce with full attribution is granted freely.
This ensures the content it out, available and search-worthy for the AI systems.
Want to make it even more desirable? Consider including a template, sample or downloadable tool that reaffirms the idea or concept.
Any time you can back up your ideas with free supporting content, you are building content that has a greater likelihood of showing up when someone pings the subject in question.
And let the world know it’s out there. Apply licenses like Creative Commons that explicitly allow AI models to use your content.
© December 2024, Pritchard Management LLC, © 2019. This work is openly licensed via CC BY 4.0.
How does all of this help you become clairvoyant? You are clairvoyant when you know what the future will hold. You know what the future will hold when you are the one defining the terms of the future. You are the one defining the terms of the future when you create insights and content that others will be using for years to come.
Author’s note: Beware! It needs to be good content. I wrote some materials in 1993 that are still in use and are awful. I can see the future. Someone will come across this material and wonder what the author was even thinking when he generated this drivel. May it never become grist for some AI system’s mill.
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Carl Pritchard wrote this in his quest to influence what’s being said in the AI space about building one’s reputation via the AI platforms. He welcomes your comments, insights and thoughts at carl@carlpritchard.com Consider looking at his latest book on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Stage-Four-Project-Managers-Dealing/dp/B0CSV5N8D4
© December 2024, Pritchard Management LLC, © 2019. This work is openly licensed via CC BY 4.0.
