Think back to when the internet started (if you are old enough to know what living without internet was like). Did we have internet experts telling us how search engines worked? Did we have search engine engineers on hand to tell us exactly how to use the internet? Did we have webinars, workshops and books on the topic? Not really. And while the resources we have now to learn about artificial intelligence is a thousand times more extensive than we had in the late 20th century, we’re still perfectly capable of learning a new technology, just like we were in the 1990s. (In fact, I used the internet to find out when it became mainstream for this article!)

Alicja Spaulding, a dynamic marketing strategist with 20 years of experience driving growth across retail, consumer goods, hospitality, and entertainment, now serves as an AI expert and chief strategy officer of Status: Alpha. She recently led a hands-on virtual session for Women Leading Travel & Hospitality members that explored how generative AI can help streamline workflows, ignite creativity, and free up time to focus on higher priority tasks.

Here are five tips Spaulding shared to get started if you’re new to AI:

  1. Find a model that works for you. Spaulding recommends putting your prompt or question into multiple large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Gemini, and stick with the one that resonates with your style. “It’s just like when you started with the internet. We didn’t know what the browser was when we first opened it,” she said. But we learned, we adapted, we found the right browser that worked for our style and preferences — and now it’s time to do the same with LLMs.
  2. Begin with simple prompts. Think about the hundreds of tasks you need to do on a daily basis, such as figuring out what to make for dinner or planning that weekend trip. Need a substitute for garlic? Ask ChatGPT what it recommends. Need to better plan your morning? Ask Claude to come up with a schedule. “ It doesn’t matter how silly the question is; if your first attempt is to go to Google or ask Siri something, reframe your thinking,” Spaulding said.
  3. Don’t focus just on the tool. The landscape of AI tools — that is, LLMs like ChatGPT — is vast and overwhelming. There’s an AI tool for everything. In fact, there’s even a website, theresanaiforthat.com, that suggests AI tools based on the task you need done. “ Look back at what your actual criteria is, what your use cases are, and be brand agnostic” when it comes to picking a tool, Spaulding advised.
  4. Make mistakes. “You can’t break it,” Spaulding said of AI. There’s no wrong way to use it. And the more you use it, the more experienced you’ll be, and the more you’ll understand what it can be used for.
  5. If you’re being nice to it, it will be nice to you. Spaulding said AI models have been trained to be very polite, so if you need brutal honesty, ask it to give you brutal honesty. Otherwise, treat it as if you were asking a human to look into something for you — think polite, but direct.

Women Leading Travel & Hospitality members can watch Spaulding’s full workshop — complete with a list of AI tools — on-demand. Not a member? Apply today!