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Episode: Soft Skills for AI: The Necessity & Enhancement of Creativity with AI [AI Today Podcast]

Author: AI & Data Today
Duration: 00:08:38

Episode Shownotes

Creativity is a uniquely human trait that allows for the expression of individuality and a range of emotions. In this episode of AI Today hosts Kathleen Walch and Ron Schmelzer continue with our soft skills series discussing creativity. AI, especially generative AI, is transforming personal and professional tasks like writing,

report generation, and image creation, making them easier and more accessible. Continue reading Soft Skills for AI: The Necessity & Enhancement of Creativity with AI [AI Today Podcast] at Cognilytica.

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_00
The AI Today podcast, produced by Cognolitica, cuts through the hype and noise to identify what is really happening now in the world of artificial intelligence.

00:00:10 Speaker_00
Learn about emerging AI trends, technologies, and use cases from Cognolitica analysts and guest experts.

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Hello and welcome to the AI Today podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Malch.

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I'm your host Ron Schmelzer.

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As we've been talking about most recently, the thing about AI that's really interesting is that the more and more we use these AI systems, especially generative AI systems, the more we realize that we need the skills of being human, our so-called soft skills, to get the most value out of these AI systems.

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We don't need to be better programmers. We don't need to learn more math. We don't need to learn more science. Don't need to learn more computer engineering or data engineering.

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Those things are helpful if I want to build those models from scratch, right? If I'm starting with raw data, I want to build AI models. But 90% now or more of the way people are working with AI systems is through

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The prompt is through these conversational systems, since these are all large language models, and they understand language, and they can do things for us in the case of generative AI systems that can generate text and images and also process input images and text.

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But in the course, we talked about agentic AI not too long ago, and we can even use our conversation to tell the machine to do things for us, right? And it's still a conversation. We're still having a conversation.

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So, as part of this, we need to get better at all these things that are all related, all these related soft skills that come around when I'm dealing with communication. One, of course, is the soft skill of being a better communicator.

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We talked about that not too long ago, but also being a better critical thinker because I need to How do I process what someone just said, what a machine just said? Do I take it at face value? Do I dig deeper?

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Do I look for other evidence, et cetera, et cetera? Are they hallucinating? I can ask the same thing about a person just as much as a machine. And of course, we need these other soft skills to help us interact with these systems, being more creative.

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We'll spend some time on that, as well as learning how to collaborate with others to achieve more. So we're going to spend time on all those. And well, today we'll dig deeper on one of those soft skills.

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Exactly. So if you haven't done so already, subscribe to AI Today.

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We're in the middle of our soft skill series right now because it is so incredibly important to talk about how soft skills really are critical and how they're impacting, you know, generative AI and the prompts that you write.

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So on today's podcast, we want to talk about the soft skill of creativity. And creativity really is one of those traits that help make us distinctly human, right? Humans are very creative beings.

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We can write poetry and write books and create works of art. And, you know, that is something that, again, is just innately human and helps make us human. So when it comes to AI and specifically generative AI,

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touching upon those aspects of creativity helps us on both sides, right? On one hand, and this is what the soft skills always do, and this is how we like to present it.

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So how do your soft skills of creativity help you be better with, you know, using and interacting with these AI systems? And then on the flip side, how do these AI systems help you be more creative?

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And it's important to understand these soft skills from both of those different angles. Because then you can say, OK, this is why it's so important that I need to be creative to get better results.

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And then how can I use it to help me be better creative? So when we think about creativity and the role that creativity plays when it comes to generative AI,

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It really is essential for helping craft those unique and effective prompts, because the better our prompts, the more it will directly influence the quality and the relevance of the outputs.

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And if you've played around with these systems, you know that. If you provide a prompt that's very general and generic, you're going to get a very general and generic answer. So if you don't want that, how do you get more creative?

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And how do you use those skills of creativity to help you get better results? We've also seen, you know, sometimes, so for example, we say, okay, well, if you want to create an image of a tree, well, you can say, okay, create an image of a tree.

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And it's probably going to give you a very general image of a tree. Maybe it's not specific enough. So you could say, okay, well, let me go one level further.

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And I really want an example of a dogwood tree that's blossoming in the spring and has a light background and the mood is happy.

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And then you use that and now you're gonna get a much more accurate result from what it is that you wanted rather than just this example of a tree. Or say you wanted an example of majestic

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forest with glowing trees and mystical creatures and the mood of the scene is peaceful and the lighting is dim and the time of the day is, you know, twilight, you're going to get a much more, you know, different image than you would, again, when you say, oh, just give me a tree.

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It's going to give you the most generic image of a tree that you can. That's how you express your creativity and the more creative you are with the prompt.

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But then you can also say, well, how can I do things in creative ways with prompt engineering that maybe I wouldn't have even thought of and see how others are doing it? We always say, you know, these soft skills come together.

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Collaboration is another soft skill. So when you collaborate with others, you can see how they're using prompts and what results they're getting. We did an interview with Sabi a few podcasts ago, and we can link to that in the show notes.

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And he was using, you know, generative AI to help dress better. for when he would be up on stage or presenting at different conferences. And so he wasn't, you know, the most fashion savvy, but he wanted to look good on stage.

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So he took a picture of his, you know, outfits that he wanted to wear and said, help me match a tie and a belt and shoes to this outfit. And out of these shirts, which shirt should I wear?

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So you can say, OK, well, that was a creative way of using this. And then you can take that and take your creativity and maybe even go one level further and say, oh, that's great. How can I use this to do something else along that same line?

00:06:24 Speaker_01
Yeah, and I think it's kind of interesting because, especially as people gain more experience with these AI systems, they'll find that they've gone from having, let's say, a writer's block, which is knowing what to write, to basically having, I guess, a prompting block, which is like, what should I prompt and how should I prompt?

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And it's kind of funny that all these are different aspects of creativity. And, you know, in some ways you can actually use these AI systems to help you break your writing block and your creativity block by asking what other people have done.

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This is some ways of doing creativity. That's the interesting thing about the human trait of creativity. That's part of a talent people have, or it's part of your innate capabilities. And different people are creative at different things.

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creative at writing, some people are creative at art, some people are creative in sports, some people are creative in finance and business, and other people are creative in other sorts of ways.

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And I think that's just, you kind of develop those traits, those things that you like, that you enjoy, and you keep developing on them.

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But even when you're developing, say, an artistic skill or a writing skill or a sports skill, you don't just do it on your own. you try to learn from others. You try to gain inspiration, as they say.

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Maybe they're not teaching you specifically how to do something. Those would be a skill, perhaps, in how to paint. But if you're thinking about like, well, what do I paint? What landscapes do I paint?

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Maybe you go to an art museum to gain some inspiration. Maybe you go online to look at some certain things. But I think that's also what we find with AI systems and prompting. It's like go and look for that inspiration.

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Find the things that'll motivate you because that's really the skill of creativity is what you're building. You're not building a programming skill or a hard coding skill or any other skill.

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You're building that creative skill and people need to learn how to exercise that skill more because we'll find ourselves getting better at it. Now, of course,

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AI systems can improve your creativity, so we can use AI, as I was kind of hinting about that, in ways to improve your own creativity.

00:08:19 Speaker_01
Whether you have a particular music talent or writing or art, you can use AI systems to help accentuate and help realize your artistic vision. This is something we talked about in our AI-enabled vision of the future.

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We had a number of podcasts where we talked about what does the future look like, when basically everything is AI enabled.

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And one of those things is that on the human expression side, which is that, you know, people can basically have the full opportunity to express their full capabilities because AI systems can augment and assist them with that, you know, the whole human experience, you know, really expanding the human experience, whether it's speaking other languages or, you know,

00:08:58 Speaker_01
There's like so much that we can do now that the barriers are really going away very quickly. So you have to think about what it is that you want.

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But like, you know, basically, you know, the whole idea of AI systems really does help, can improve your own creativity, give you ideas to do, give you styles to envision or help you execute on your creative vision in different ways.

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So this is how we sort of see, you know, AI enhancing your own creative skills as well.

00:09:25 Speaker_02
Exactly.

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You know, and we've seen it now a few years ago actually came out that there was an AI-generated piece of art that, you know, through prompt engineering and getting good at that, won some awards and competitions and some people got a little upset about that.

00:09:40 Speaker_02
But we're also seeing AI-assisted writing tools where it can help come up with unique narratives, maybe plot twists, helping you craft different storylines that maybe you hadn't thought of before.

00:09:53 Speaker_02
We're also seeing casual musicians now and composers really being able to create new music in a variety of different styles and genres with just some prompting, which is really exciting because before you needed a lot of, you know, specific skill sets in view and maybe, you know, tools and some of them were quite expensive or hard to learn.

00:10:14 Speaker_02
And now you don't need to do that anymore. Maybe you don't need to be the best at playing a musical instrument and you can still generate some of these background beats used for a variety of different things.

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One, maybe you're a casual musician, but also maybe you'd like to use something in a professional setting where you're creating a video and you want a specific style of music. Now you can go ahead and do that.

00:10:34 Speaker_02
So we really can significantly enhance our creativity with the help of AI. But we can also be more creative with generative AI and how exactly we're doing it. And again, we say that these soft skills really all do complement each other very well.

00:10:52 Speaker_02
And so you're not just only using one skill. But the beauty of prompt engineering, and we say this often, really lies in its low stakes for failure. So feel free and feel encouraged and empowered to really try different prompts.

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You know, really embrace your creative side, try some of these out of the box ideas that maybe you otherwise wouldn't do. Because again, it's low stakes for failure.

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You know, you don't need to have a lot of those hard skills that we talked about where you don't need to be able to code and you don't need to have, you know,

00:11:28 Speaker_02
a lot of math skills to do this, and you also don't need to rely on others in the organization.

00:11:33 Speaker_02
Maybe with, you know, past things you've needed licenses, and so maybe you don't have access to some sort of technology because you didn't have a license for it, or you can only use it in a work environment, but with prompts and

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and generative AI, you really can use it in all aspects of your life.

00:11:48 Speaker_02
So we say get out of your comfort zone, don't hesitate to test various different approaches, even those that maybe you wouldn't otherwise necessarily try, because it can help you be more creative.

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And maybe that result didn't give you exactly what you wanted, but it helps kind of spark that, you know, imagination and creativity so that you can do other things.

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We also say study other prompts and talk to others, especially peers, other people at your organization that, you know, fostering creativity to expand the, you know, what's possible outside of what it is that you're doing, maybe even outside of your direct

00:12:28 Speaker_02
group within the organization really does help you, you know, get more creative. We always say, you're probably, you know, not doing this alone.

00:12:38 Speaker_02
And even if it feels unique, you're still, it's probably not, and other people are doing it, but you just have to you know, maybe expand one level further and say, okay, well, they're applying it to this. How can I apply it to this?

00:12:49 Speaker_02
And, you know, kind of get creative there and say, you know, and how can you relate it? And again, these come down to critical thinking, communication, collaboration. So all of these soft skills do play together.

00:13:01 Speaker_01
Yeah, so I think one of the things we can just offer here in this podcast is to really focus on those soft skills as much as you can. As we mentioned, it'll help you be better at working with AI.

00:13:11 Speaker_01
We talk a lot about all the other things we do with AI, and you can go back and listen to all the podcast episodes we've had, and the vast majority of them have nothing to do with generative AI.

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It's kind of interesting how the conversation now about AI is so dominated by generative AI, but that's because generative AI puts the capabilities of AI pretty much at everybody's fingertips, whereas

00:13:30 Speaker_01
A lot of the things we've been talking about, a lot of the use cases, you had to be a data scientist, a machine learning engineer, you had to collect the data and clean the data and do all the things that we talk about in our CPMAI methodology.

00:13:40 Speaker_01
That's the process and steps that you need to go ahead and build and use AI systems. Now, the CPMAI methodology, the Cognitive Project Management for AI methodology, is still highly relevant when you're using generative AI.

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You still need to figure out what problem you're solving, what pattern of AI. then you need to sort of figure out if you have the data that you need for it.

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Then you have to figure out how to prepare that data and then build and use the model and then evaluate the model and operationalize it.

00:14:04 Speaker_01
But we're just, I would say, accelerating that because there's some steps that we don't need to be doing in such intenseness that we needed to do before. However, we're still fundamentally working with data-driven systems.

00:14:16 Speaker_01
It seems like magic a lot because it is kind of magical. But basically, long story short, these systems really just taking learning patterns from big data and returning what it thinks you're looking for from those patterns.

00:14:30 Speaker_01
So it's just a lot of the math has been taken away from you to do that. And someone else, some other people have spent a lot of time and money building these models that you can just talk to. That's the thing. They've already spent their time and money.

00:14:44 Speaker_01
So, the skills that you need now are just the skills that you need to interact with that model.

00:14:50 Speaker_01
And that's why these soft skills become so important, because you don't need to basically rebuild the model, you don't need to do fine-tuning, you don't need to do a lot of this data engineering stuff, but you do need to communicate, you do need to collaborate, you do need to be creative, and you do need to be critical thinking.

00:15:02 Speaker_01
Because if you're not doing those things, then you're not doing anything else. You're probably going to get either very generic, very bad, hallucinated results. And that's really what this part of the series is all about.

00:15:15 Speaker_02
Exactly. So if you haven't done so already, subscribe to AI Today so you can get notified of all of our upcoming episodes, especially as we continue along in our Soft Skills series.

00:15:24 Speaker_02
We also have a newsletter on LinkedIn that I encourage you to subscribe to, and I will link to that in the show notes.

00:15:30 Speaker_02
We publish it weekly, and we go over various thought leadership there, as well as upcoming events that Ron and I are speaking at, either together or separately.

00:15:41 Speaker_02
And we also share some news from the week as well as some Forbes articles that we write and podcasts that you may have not heard of. So, you know, our podcasts are different episodes. We like to highlight a few of them in there.

00:15:55 Speaker_02
So I will link to that in the show notes. You can subscribe to that as well and reach out to us. We love to hear from our listeners. As Ron mentioned, CPM AI is a best practices methodology for running and managing AI projects.

00:16:06 Speaker_02
I will link to that in the show notes as well. Many of our podcast listeners are CPM AI certified. You may hear some interviews that we've had with CPM AI certified folks on our podcast, and we have a few more coming up.

00:16:17 Speaker_02
So we're excited about those as well. So definitely subscribe to AI Today. Like this episode and want to hear more? With hundreds of episodes and over 3 million downloads, check out more AI Today podcasts at aitoday.live.

00:16:31 Speaker_02
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00:16:44 Speaker_02
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00:16:57 Speaker_02
Check it out at aitoday.live slash list. This sound recording and its contents are copyright by Cognolitica. All rights reserved. Music by Matsu Gravas. As always, thanks for listening to AI Today, and we'll catch you at the next podcast.