Riding the AI Wave Without Wiping Out

Earlier this week, I participated in the Greater Manchester Chamber – NH’s Business Unboxed: Riding the Wave of AI. Sitting in a room full of local professionals, a very clear realization hit me. We’re all essentially living out the same story right now. We’re trying to figure out how to handle a technology that changes before we even have time to research the current version. Lately, it feels like we are being fed a constant narrative: use AI or get left behind.

The honest truth is that nobody has a perfect roadmap. My goal is to learn how to adapt to these rapidly evolving AI tools without compromising my work ethic or the quality of my day-to-day work.

Authenticity and the human element should always come first. AI didn’t arrive with an instruction manual, so we’re all trying to adopt this technology in a practical way with our work, right?

I treat AI as an assistant, not a replacement. I wouldn’t give an assistant, real or AI, the role of a creative director, an account manager, a lawyer, or an accountant. Why would I? The point is to train the AI as you would an intern or an assistant, and to help you with tasks that improve your job performance and give you more time to strategize or brainstorm ideas for your business or your clientele. Spend more time on the real work and allow AI to help you present your data better or help you research your target market better. The strategy and the insights are still entirely mine. AI just saves me the time I used to spend staring at a blank page or formatting tables.

Another way I use AI is the same way I use my Writer’s Block. Ever seen one of these? It’s an actual block where you can open to a random page to get an idea or a topic to help you with your blog or next short story. It also helps me with my punctuation and formatting, which I really appreciate, since I don’t have a writing center to visit as I did in college.

Professionally, embracing these updates is necessary. At the Google Marketing Live 2026 event, we saw just how deeply AI is integrated into modern digital marketing. Everything from AI Max to Asset Studio and Google Analytics updates is now centered around Gemini. On the outside, these tools are highly effective for earned media, website traffic, and search. For example, earned media relies on coverage and word of mouth that you do not pay for. AI tools can quickly scan blogs and news outlets to find the right journalists and match your story to recent coverage. It is much faster than manual research, though it still requires human verification to ensure accuracy. I’m also keeping a close eye on GEO/AEO technologies, which are essentially updated versions of SEO designed specifically for AI search models.

The leading LLMs or AI tools are ChatGPT by OpenAI, Claude by Anthropic, Perplexity, and Gemini by Google. The development is fast, and in my opinion, I wish it would slow down, but these are the leaders in the space right now. In addition, at the conference, people shared a few interesting tools worth looking into, such as Fireflies for note-taking, Descript for video & audio editing, Netlify for web development and hosting, and Podpitch for sending pitches to podcasts.

Ultimately, AI has not changed what clients need. They still want smart strategy, good creative work, and a partner who actually understands their business. AI is simply a tool that speeds up the process of getting to a first draft and saves us time on the work that truly matters. It’s a helpful assistant, but it is not taking over. We are all still learning. Businesses and agencies exploring and researching all these AI tools right now and asking questions out loud are actually ahead of the ones pretending they have it all solved.

But, Personally

And finally, while AI makes sense for my day job, I like to keep it strictly confined to business hours. Outside of work, I need a break from screens and algorithms. As I often share in my newsletter, Amplified World, I listen to many vinyl records, subscribe to and read magazines and books. I still watch movies on Blu-ray an dlisten to the radio. I spend my time kayaking, weeding the garden, and traveling.

Like many of us, I do not want AI creeping into the creative, personal aspects of my life.

Let’s keep it professional.