From grading papers to deciphering jargon, how AI is changing jobs.

Artificial intelligence is permeating the workplace and changing the nature of work in every aspect.

Teachers use it to create lesson plans and grade papers. Marketing professionals use this to work in rooms and learn about the needs of potential customers. Product managers want AI to act as an interpreter when they can’t get technical conversations out of their heads during meetings.

Some people who use AI tools are concerned that widespread use of the technology could undermine critical thinking skills, especially in children. They also warn that AI-assisted tools need to be checked carefully as they are known to hallucinate and make mistakes.

Here are some ways people in different jobs can use artificial intelligence to save time and generate ideas.

One creative way Kristin Moore, technical product manager at PERQ, a digital marketing platform for property management companies, uses AI is to ensure she can understand her colleagues’ technically advanced conversations. If she’s in a meeting and an engineer is talking about a topic she doesn’t understand, she can upload the recorded conversation through Claude, an AI assistant developed by Anthropic, and ask her to summarize what she needs to do to follow up.

“He takes all the terminology that I don’t understand and simplifies it to something that I understand,” Moore said.

She also asks AI tools to read emails, support tickets, and recorded meetings and conversations to determine what customers want the company to build.

“It definitely freed up a lot of hours a week,” Moore said.

Kyle Weimar, an elementary school teacher at Charter Schools USA, is the coordinator of a multi-tiered support system for Florida schools. The role involves developing plans to support children who perform in the bottom 20% of the student body.

In that role, he uploads test scores, report cards and health information to the district’s AI tools. And ask it before the meeting to brainstorm what the district can do to help each child.

Weimar also uses AI to grade papers. He says you can upload 100 to an AI agent, give it a grading guide, grade it and give instant feedback to students. “What used to take a week can now be done in 30 minutes,” he says.

Teachers are so busy working that “if there’s a tool we can use to make that job a little more doable, we’d love to use it,” Weimar said.

Ashley Smith, director of marketing at HireQuest, a staffing and recruitment company with approximately 400 franchises, used Claude to build a dashboard to analyze website traffic data and social media trends. HireQuest followers report what they’re responding to or ignoring, and Smith uses that information to inform franchisees how to get more business, she said.

Recently, when members of her sales team attended a large manufacturing trade show, she asked them to take screenshots of companies they wanted to pursue. She uploaded the images to an AI platform that generated a list with company names, as well as insights about staffing needs for the next 18 to 24 months based on press releases and stock reports.

Smith says the time saved by offloading research tasks to AI has allowed him to spend more one-on-one time with franchisees.

“AI hasn’t replaced anything. It’s just expanded what we can offer franchisees,” Smith says. “It allows us to do things that frankly we couldn’t do two years ago.”

A design leader at Georgia-Pacific, a pulp and paper company that makes Dixie Cups, Quilted Northern toilet paper and other consumer products, said he uses AI to create rapid visuals. For example, when brainstorming how to modernize the Brownie paper towel brand, Andrew Markle said his team asked AI to depict what the man depicted on the packaging would look like with a longer or shorter beard.

Using AI, Markle said, team members were able to explore ideas faster, and the tool was also able to predict how target consumers would respond.

“It’s not a substitute for a creative perspective on what’s good and what’s right for our business,” Markle said. “We knew that ultimately we would partner with an advertising agency. We have an illustrator who would help us envision the final vision.”

Kenneth Lynch, a special education coach in Tulsa, Oklahoma, teaches students with developmental disabilities life skills to live independently. Utilizing AI, we are developing quizzes as learning materials. For example, when working with students who wanted to work in the automotive industry, Lynch uploaded machine manuals to an AI tool that generated quizzes for each chapter.

He is reluctant to trust AI when it comes to seeking guidance regarding his psychological state. “When you look at different types of diagnoses and try to relate co-existing diagnoses, you have a really hard time understanding how they fit together,” Lynch says.

Rabbi Pense, chief information officer at the University of Michigan, used AI to prepare for meetings by having a tool predict what questions he would receive.

“It has made me much more efficient,” Pense said. “I have more time to focus on my own mental health and wellness.”

The University of Michigan has also developed an AI tutor that allows professors to customize their students’ course materials to provide 24-hour support, he said. However, Pendse is mindful of using AI responsibly.

“We all need to think about how we can ensure that AI does not undermine our critical thinking skills, especially the critical thinking skills of our children,” Pense said. “As we grew, we learned from our mistakes. We wrote bad papers, but we got better.”

One way Bob Jones, the university’s assistant vice president for emerging technologies and support services, uses AI is to make sure emails are concise enough for the target audience.

“When communicating, especially about touchy topics, try to remain neutral and thoughtful,” Jones said. “So the idea of ​​actually evaluating how I’m expressing myself is something that AI is very good at.”

The marketing director at SumnerOne, a company that provides printers, copiers, and IT services, wants AI tools to help create email campaigns, social media posts, and slide decks. Natalie Bryce said she also uses it to understand her ideal customer.

For example, when she was looking to sell printing services to universities, she asked chatGPT, an AI tool created by OpenAI, to create an estimated demographic profile of the university’s admissions directors. She then asked the system to predict what her directors’ top five problems were and identify how her product could help solve them.

“When it first came up, I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is the end for us,'” Bryce said of the early days of AI. But instead of just being afraid, she began to dig in and learn.

“The efficiencies that came out of it were tremendous,” she said.