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As AI capabilities evolve swiftly and continuously, some big corporate names are weaving the technology deeply into their day-to-day operations. Salesforce is a leading example, with the sales software company already claiming it’s saving it $100 million a year. But report after report suggests that few of these AI integration efforts include one final, critical step like the one the global bank Citigroup is taking. It’s now mandating that most of its workers learn how to properly prompt AI systems.
The decision was announced last week in a LinkedIn posting from the bank’s head of technology and business enablement, Tim Ryan, HRDive reports. AI prompt training is now required for all workers who can access the bank’s AI tools — about 180,000 people. Apparently, if you’re already well versed in AI prompts, the training will last only about 10 minutes, and beginners should expect it to take about 30 minutes. That’s not much time, but the training is clearly not intended to be comprehensive or a deep dive, which would waste hundreds of thousands of hours of workers’ time. Citi’s approach is to give everyone a light introduction that boosts the average employee’s ability to use AI.
The bank reportedly doesn’t require its staff to use AI, in contrast to other AI integration efforts — in April 2024, for example, Moderna’s CEO hit the headlines when he told staff he expected them to use AI at least 20 times a day. Citi’s intention is to make the most of AI’s promise to tackle basic mundane tasks and free workers up to work on more productive parts of their jobs. The system has been prompted over 6.5 million times during 2024, Ryan said. That would equate to about 36 prompts for every employee.
Prompt engineering is at heart a simple idea: it’s learning how to choose and then reshape the questions you ask of an AI chatbot in order to steer it toward producing exactly the responses you need. Think of it as being like tasking an intern to build, say, a template Powerpoint presentation for you — give them a general idea, then look at their first effort and refine your instructions so they ultimately include all the elements you’d like. AI tools require a similar process, and sometimes requires the user to provide very carefully chosen language.
For some experts, prompt engineering could morph into a whole career, and prompting may become as much a part of the average workday as sending emails or Slacking your coworkers. Earlier this year, Slack’s chief marketing officer predicted that staff would soon be talking with AIs in the office more than they talk to their colleagues.
This may seem like a bleak future, but it’s undeniable that learning to properly use an AI system is one way to ensure your company sees a return on its new, buzzy tech investment. But many reports suggest that when companies roll out AI they simply aren’t informing their staff how and when to use it, nor offering appropriate training. At best this means leaders may be missing out on some of the worker efficiency and productivity boosts that the tech can offer, and at worst it could lead to a one of their employees leaking sensitive company information out by say, entering secret fiscal data into a third-party AI system.
What’s the lesson here for you and your AI-using workforce?
It’s simple. If you haven’t already invested in some training time, you should. AI is already powerful enough to simplify certain tasks, and as AI agent technology improves it can even take on typical time-munching office tasks like automatically filling in digital timesheets or helping workers file expenses claims — necessary, but unproductive uses of their precious work hours.
The other thing to remember is that AI training shouldn’t be a one-shot affair. The tools are advancing so quickly that you should plan a regular schedule to refresh your workers on the latest tools that are on offer.
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Kit Eaton
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