AI Around the Work

Useful AI does not always need a new place to visit. A document can arrive ready for review. Related records can be gathered before a conversation. A discrepancy can reach the person who knows what to do about it.

These are workflows people can design around real work. Chat can remain part of them, particularly when someone wants to investigate a result or try a different approach.

Paper boats carry envelopes along a winding river from one colleague to another, who reads at a desk beside a tiny landing stage. — Beside the stream Background work should arrive where someone can understand and use it.

Make the result easy to question

For document review, a useful workflow might identify relevant passages, compare them with the team’s requirements, and bring possible gaps to a reviewer. The reviewer needs to see the passages and understand why they were flagged. A confident summary without the source makes their job harder.

The person reviewing should also be able to correct the method. A recurring false alarm is information about the workflow, not a reason to ask the team to become more patient with it. Some cases may be handled automatically; others need a person. We work that out with the people who know the consequences.

Notice the work created downstream

Generating more reports is easy. Giving someone a useful basis for a decision takes attention to what they need, when they need it, and what they can do with it.

A good background workflow helps its recipients act and makes its mistakes discoverable. It should be possible to find out what happened, change the approach, or stop it when it no longer helps. The machinery can stay out of the way without becoming unaccountable.

Original illustration generated with AI for this belief.