Thriving Through Change: Building and Balance Using AI

“It’s kind of a crazy time in technology where we built a tool and we don’t know all of the actual possibilities that it can be used for. Usually, we built a tool specifically to solve a problem. Now we just built a tool, in theory, to solve every problem. And it’s kind of weird, because how do we test that it can solve every problem?”

The London chapter of CreativeMornings heard an enlightening perspective on AI from a full stack machine learning engineer and then held a workshop to build simple HTML apps using AI.

The event was part of our special event series called “Thriving Through Change” designed to foster meaningful discussions about the challenges that creative professionals are facing today.

Thanks to our Global Partner Adobe, some of our most engaged CreativeMornings chapters around the world are designing interactive event formats that unleash the collective wisdom of our community.

“I like building stuff. I like working with new technology. The main thing I care about is actually solving problems. I care about building stuff that people can use to do things with that thing.”

Zack Akil, a full stack machine learning engineer at Google, shared his learning and using AI with an emphasis on problem-solving and practical applications. He discussed the evolving landscape of AI tools, the challenges of overhyping AI, the need for continuous experimentation, and how to leverage AI for productivity while maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

Be Patient With AI Hype

Zack explained that AI has immense potential,but new features are often showcased prematurely. He compared it to the early days of virtual reality, where excitement outpaced the technology’s capabilities. He advised managing expectations as you experiment with different AI platforms because they are constantly pushing boundaries. So, if an AI doesn’t perform as well as expected on a task, try again in a few weeks because new features and models are improving so quickly. This approach of continuous experimentation will enable you to find more effective solutions.

Ethical Considerations in AI

Zack also touched on the ethical implications of AI, including bias in training data, privacy concerns, and the environmental costs of training large models. He encouraged participants to consider these factors when developing and deploying AI solutions.

Productivity and Work-Life Balance

While many people think that AI will make everyone more productive or fear that it will replace people in jobs, Zach offered the take that AI will make people who are already productive even more productive – that those of us who take on too much work will feel pressure to do even more. He stressed that AI is not an automatic solution to having better work life balance. Instead, he insists that the ability to say no to work that isn’t impactful or a match and focusing on the work that truly matters is a better approach.

However, Zach also shared several tools he’s built to streamline his work processes. For example, he created an email extension that extracts dates and appointments from his inbox to help him manage his calendar more efficiently.

He also demonstrated a Google Sheets script he made that automatically rewrites his project notes to align with his manager’s expectations on performance review. This allowed him to focus on the work itself instead of spending more time documenting his work.

Thanks to AI, anyone can build simple tools to help with their unique, everyday tasks.

“Include the prompt ‘build me a simple HTML app.’ This is the most useful thing, I think as a non-programmer, you should know about because now you can actually build simple apps that can help you in life.”

After sharing his insights, Zach invited everyone to pull out their laptop or phone and open their preferred AI. Then, using Gemini as an example AI, Zach instructed everyone to select the setting for canvas. This enables you to ask the AI for code and have it display an app interface for what you’re asking it to build.

The room quickly felt like a hackathon as people played with AI and showed off their results to the people sitting around them.

“I created a quick prototype using Gemini on my phone for something I’ve been thinking about for many years and didn’t know it was so easy to do.”

You can check out more conversations about AI in our Thriving Through Change series hosted by CreativeMornings chapters around the world.