The tension between humans and AI has long been debated but we’re at a turning point where we can’t ignore its power – and potential – anymore. In a new piece, Moon Kim, Executive Vice President and Corporate Practice Lead at M Booth, and Lauren Arthur, Senior Vice President on the Corporate team at M Booth, explore how organizations can embrace AI while preserving the creativity, strategy, and empathy that define great work. Read on to learn how to prepare teams to thrive in an AI-powered future through responsible usage, continuous learning, and a human-first mindset.
There is endless conversation around the future of AI. Will it replace human jobs? Is it overhyped? How do we use it ethically and responsibly? Do we need to use it at all? And how transparent should we be about using it?
Our take is simple: AI is here to stay, and we need to learn how to adapt. And when used responsibly, it can unlock greater human potential. While we can’t predict what the world – or our jobs – will look like in a decade, what we do know is that the time is ripe to lean in, get curious, and experiment regularly with AI, otherwise we risk falling behind.
Leading with a Change Mindset to Upskill Talent for the Future
As leaders, we have a responsibility to prepare our teams for an AI-powered workplace while promoting responsible AI usage — and that starts with leading by example. Integrating AI in the workplace, in our workflows and our work outputs require a change mindset — especially pronounced in our industry where AI has also reinforced the importance of earned and owned media in brand visibility.
To support the embrace of this new mindset, we created a Corporate team AI Ambassador group who serve as internal AI champions. Fostering a grassroots adoption model, this group brings new use cases to instill greater confidence in team AI usage as well as provides a critical feedback loop to assess what’s working, what’s confusing, and what additional AI resources our team needs.
During our monthly team meetings, we talk about the importance of responsible AI usage, including knowing and following both company and client policies. Team members are encouraged to share how they used AI to help with an assignment or make a task more efficient. At the same time, we openly discuss AI failures, as we know large language models (LLMs) can still hallucinate, making checking for accuracy a must.
One thing we uncovered from our team discussions is that a collaborative prompt library emerged as the leading resource desired by our team. We’re now regularly updating this digital library of pre-written prompts, ready-to-use instructions and questions designed to help our team interact more effectively with AI systems and ultimately cultivate a culture of continuous experimenting.
In addition to our team development, we focus on AI curiosity during our recruitment process. We noticed that when we asked candidates if they were using AI, we were met with a range of responses, including some defensive answers driven likely by candidates’ fear of judgment. Noticing this, we changed the interview questions to try and break this stigma while encouraging an open dialogue about AI usage. We now ask about their curiosity to better understand how they’re exploring AI and what they think its role will be in the future of work. This slight shift has driven us to have richer conversations on their personal AI journeys and helps us uncover a candidate’s curiosity vs. know how.
Finding the “right” balance of human originality and AI-efficiency
AI should elevate, not replace, and staying in the driver’s seat is key to finding the balance of human originality and AI-efficiency. This often means using it to refine, not originate, outputs to reflect your voice and perspective. This is what we call human-centered AI: where we’re leaning on AI to help us unlock more time for creative and strategic thinking, identifying emerging trends for innovation, and deepening our colleague and client relationships.
When we polled our team of 45+ practitioners on how they are using AI, we found that usage can be distilled into three main categories:
The good news is that there's not one “right” way to use AI, nor is expertise exclusive to digitally-native Gen Z employees or tenured senior leaders. At our agency, we make it a priority to use AI in real-time during working sessions to ideate concepts, refine deliverables or evaluate output for both quality and ethical considerations. By jointly exploring AI, we can sharpen our individual and collective understanding, as well as discover new prompting strategies and fresh ways of thinking. Carving out scheduled AI “playtime” will continue to expand your curiosity, enhance your capabilities and help identify areas for personal and professional growth.
And regardless of which use case category someone falls under, we remind our teams of the most important takeaway: AI can coach, but it can’t replace your human personality. Your unique, authentic voice is your greatest edge.
Letting AI-Anxiety Fuel our Future AI Confidence
Research shows that ‘AI Anxiety’ exists at every level - from junior employees to the C-suite. Concerns around AI are not totally unwarranted, but those who prioritize learning how to best leverage human-to-machine collaboration and human-to-human soft skills will be successful in the future. The more we experiment and collaborate with AI, the more confident – and less anxious – we become.
As we explore the various AI tools at our disposal and get comfortable integrating it into our workflows, AI fluency will quickly become table stakes. Differentiation will come from the unique human experience and knowledge you’re able to layer throughout.
The communications industry has always thrived on a blend of strategy, creativity, and human understanding. AI doesn’t diminish that—it can amplify it, provided we use it wisely and responsibly. The future belongs to those who are curious, willing to experiment and embrace change. For PR and communications leaders, the path forward is clear: balance human ingenuity with AI efficiency, and help upskill and lead your teams into the next era of work with confidence.
And in the spirit of transparency, two humans wrote this article and then used AI to act as our editor, and then further edited what AI gave us to inject more of our originality. Human-centered AI in action!
