Effective leaders grasp the concept of the "automation paradox, " where the increasing sophistication and complexity of technology heightens the importance of human users in its operation. As generative AI rapidly advances, many business leaders struggle to keep up with the pace of change. To use generative AI effectively and ethically during its early stages, leaders need to take the following eight actions, as recommended by Jackson Bremen, Katie Mumford, and members of the Northwestern University Robotics Club: 1. Ensure honesty and accuracy: Leaders must address the surprise inaccuracy and "hallucinations" that generative AI tools sometimes produce. These tools may generate false information or confidently assert incorrect statements due to limited training data or poorly phrased prompts. Effective leaders guide human users in creating high-quality prompts and verifying content accuracy. 2. Uphold ethics and legality: Establishing usage standards and use cases helps employees consistently respect privacy, copyrights, and consent of creators. Due to the vast amounts of training data used in AI tools, determining the original sources can be challenging. Leaders can adopt techniques where content is generated from verified documents instead of relying on models containing all knowledge. 3. Safeguard confidential information: Implementing usage standards with guidelines and procedures prevents the exposure of confidential company, employee, and customer data. Leaders develop and enforce policies and checks to avoid proprietary information leakage through AI platforms, including during AI learning and training. They also ensure legal and security reviews of AI services. 4. Maintain transparency: Leaders should educate users about how AI models work and their limitations. AI tools often function as "black boxes, " making it difficult to evaluate their output and references. Transparency should be prioritized at all stages of models and generated outputs.

Choosing AI tools that list the sources used during content generation can help address transparency challenges. 5. Provide context: While AI excels at synthesizing content, it struggles with situational awareness and analysis. Human users play a crucial role in offering context. Effective leaders may hire AI Prompt Engineers, individuals skilled at utilizing generative AI tools and clarifying the desired output. These individuals efficiently provide the necessary context for optimal tool utilization. 6. Foster empathy, compassion, and connection: Generative AI can mimic empathy and compassion, creating seemingly human interaction and emotional support. Leaders help employees understand that AI outputs appearing emotional are not genuine. They guide their people to interpret messages correctly and provide genuine human connection in an increasingly digital age. 7. Address bias: Generative AI models inherit biases present in the content used for training, including analytical and social biases. Effective leaders acknowledge that AI's performance depends on the data it is trained on. They take steps to ensure objectivity and fairness in data input and interpretation of output. 8. Complete the work: Generative AI tools can assist in tasks like writing, creating code, generating plans, and answering routine questions. However, it is crucial for human users to add their insights and shape outputs based on their skills and experience. Leaders recognize that the human user's role remains vital in completing tasks and strive to optimize the benefits of generative AI while managing associated risks. By evolving the role of human users in parallel with generative AI technology, effective leaders maximize the advantages of these evolving tools while mitigating potential drawbacks.