August 13, 2025

Artificially Intelligent, Actually Useful.

A Weekly AI Update So You Don't Have To Wing It

Becoming AI-Fluent

This week's newsletter exposes a critical bottleneck in AI adoption and success: people. MIT's study shows that half of AI performance gains come from user skill development. It's not systems, agents, or models, it's organizational readiness that's actually holding back progress. The companies winning with AI are investing in smart tools and new processes, and building AI-fluent teams. Providing employees training, and encouragement to refine how they interact with AI, is a huge part of the formula for your company's success.

MIT study reveals user prompting skills contribute equally to AI performance gains as model upgrades. Encouraging users to experiment, revise, and learn is helping drive better outcomes

Skills gaps emerge as primary barrier as most organizations haven't invested in AI literacy training, leaving tools "available but not embedded"

Strategic tool selection matters as AI Magazine's ranking reveals how ChatGPT leads enterprise productivity while specialized platforms excel in specific business contexts

Good Prompts Matter as Much as Having Good Models

MIT research involving 1,900 participants revealed the only half of AI performance improvements come from better models. The other half are from how users adapt their prompting techniques to leverage new capabilities. This suggests that investing in AI tools without training your team to use them effectively wastes half the potential performance gains.

Key Insight: The study found that prompting is communication, not coding. The best performers weren't software engineers but people who could "express ideas clearly in everyday language." The research offer three priorities for you to consider: invest in training and experimentation, design interfaces that encourage iteration and clear feedback, and recognize that using AI to rewrite prompts can actually degrade performance!

Read MIT Study →

Breaking Through the AI Adoption Bottleneck

Despite headlines about AI transformation, BCG's 2025 AI at Work report reveals that a majority of organizations have not matured their AI capabilities. The barriers aren't technical, they're human. Skills gaps are leaving employees unconfident with AI tools with only about 25% of frontline employees receiving strong AI-centric leadership support. If your company is in this position, it means AI sits "in the toolbox, not on the workbench."

Strategic Take-away: To move from access to adoption, you need alignment, AI fluency across all teams, and active support for experimentation. Interestingly, the more employees use AI, the more their concerns grow. However, after some time, once workers are even more well-informed and familiar with AI, apprehension turns to enthusiasm and AI collaboration.

Read BCG Publication →

AI Tools - Strengths and Rankings

AI Magazine's comprehensive ranking reveals how different tools excel in specific business contexts. ChatGPT leads for enterprise productivity and collaborative workflows, while Gemini leads in multimodal capabilities and complex analysis. Specialized tools like Synthesia for video creation and Amazon Q for secure enterprise integration demonstrate the importance of matching tool capabilities to specific organizational needs.

Actionable Steps: Successful AI adoption requires understanding each platform's core competencies, rather than following market hype. The key is aligning tool selection with specific workflows and your objectives. In fact, using multiple tools often yields the best results, as each offer unique advantages in specific use cases.

View AI Magazine Rankings →

Quick Hits

AI Can Make Your Dinner Reservations

Perplexity's OpenTable integration allows users to discover restaurants and complete reservations directly through its interface, highlighting its evolution from advanced search to enabling direct action.

Fifty-Five AI Terms You Should Know

CNET's essential glossary covers everything from AGI and hallucinations to prompt engineering and AI ethics, defining the vocabulary you need for effective AI strategy discussions and developing organizational readiness.

Understanding Large Language Models

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini are all Large Language Models (LLMs). This comprehensive guide from University of Colorado explains the fundamentals in an easy-to-understand way, empowering you to make informed decisions about AI adoption and how to effectively deploy AI in your organization.

Industry Developments

Coral Protocol's Scaling Architecture Bests Microsoft

London's Coral Protocol achieved record scores on Meta's GAIA Benchmark. Horizontally scaling mini / open-source language models working in parallel, this new architecture outperformed Microsoft's platform by 34%. This validates looking for alternative AI architectures and offers the promise of more cost-effective AI solutions into the future.

ChatGPT Uses Google Search Behind the Scenes

A recent experiment showed that ChatGPT uses Google's search index, not just Bing as previously believed. To prove this, a fake term (NexorbalOptimization) was created on a website and made visible only to Google, and ChatGPT found it. This means your Google SEO does impact AI visibility, so make sure to keep up your traditional SEO best practices.

Alright, that's a wrap for the week!

The current research is clear: if you want success for your business, don't just buy better tools; build better teams. From MIT's research showing prompting skills matter, to business leaders identifying skills gaps as the primary barrier, the message is consistent. Success in AI comes from investing in people, not just platforms.

The question isn't whether your team has access to AI, it's whether they have the skills and organizational support to use it effectively.

Hit reply, I'd love to hear how you're approaching the people side of AI adoption.

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August 27, 2025

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Artificially Intelligent, Actually Useful.

Good Prompts Matter as Much as Having Good Models

Breaking Through the AI Adoption Bottleneck

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Quick Hits

Industry Developments

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Artificially Intelligent, Actually Useful.

Good Prompts Matter as Much as Having Good Models

Breaking Through the AI Adoption Bottleneck

AI Tools - Strengths and Rankings

Quick Hits

Industry Developments

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Explore More Newsletters

Overwhelmingly Underwhelming.

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Proactive AI Advantage

Got a project in mind?Tell us about it.

Got a project in mind?
Tell us about it.