Be Careful What You Ask AI

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Artificial Intelligence  

I recently asked Where Should You Use Artificial Intelligence?, exploring how PMs needed to consider appropriate scenarios to use AI. One of the examples that I used was around identifying risks.

A comment (quite rightly) pointed out that in addition to helping to identify risks, AI could also help to develop responses. The same comment also pointed out the need to ensure that questions posed to AI tools are structured appropriately to ensure that you actually get what you want—and need—from the response.

That thoughtful comment made me think that I should explore those ideas a bit more, so that’s what I’m going to do here. I wouldn’t be surprised if the advice that I offer becomes obsolete within just a few months (such is the pace of advancement of AI technologies), but I believe the principles will remain sound, even if the specifics change.

What do you want to know?
Let’s take that example of asking an AI tool for guidance on how to respond to a risk. Let’s make it a simple risk, say the risk that the technical approach to developing the solution is more complex than expected.

You want some ideas on different potential ways to mitigate that risk, to develop contingency options, and perhaps to identify some early warning signs. Chances are that between the PM and the team, there are already some reasonable ideas—…

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