12 Smart Ways to Leverage AI and Stay Ahead of the Curve

The rising Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption in businesses across industries fuels serious concerns about potential job losses, causing extreme stress among individuals. While the concerns are legitimate, you can turn the situation to your favor by riding the AI wave in the following 12 ways.

Investing in AI Skill Development

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One of the most notable ways you can benefit from the AI wave is by investing in learning AI skills. Regardless of your work profile or industry, you’ll be expected to have fundamental AI knowledge and skills in the future. As 96% of business executives urgently plan to integrate AI into their business operations, having AI skills can land you high-paying opportunities. 

Nearly 70% of business leaders say they prefer hiring a less experienced candidate with AI skills over an experienced candidate with zero AI knowledge/skills. Talk to your seniors to find the most desirable AI skills in your niche and start learning. 

Earning through AI-Powered Side Hustles

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You can use AI to launch profitable side hustles if you’re bullish on generating multiple income streams. Since AI can do many tedious tasks, people can use it creatively to fuel their side hustle revenue. For example, travel agents can use ChatGPT to speed up itinerary creation.

Nicole Cueto, a New York-based travel agent, cut her research time in half using AI, allowing her to take up more clients in the same timeframe. You can explore how AI can be applied to your side hustle projects for improved revenue, productivity, and efficiency.   

Enhancing Job Applications with AI Tools

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Job seekers can use AI to improve their job application process, landing more interviews and lucrative opportunities. According to a survey, nearly 14% of job seekers used AI throughout the job application process, with resume creation being the most common use case. 

The survey also revealed a surprising finding that 77% of job seekers who used AI tools for the job application process secured higher-paying jobs compared to 48% of job seekers who didn’t use AI. So, start using AI tools for resume creation, cover letter customization, interview preparation, job searching, etc., for greater results. 

Pursuing Careers in AI Startups

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The AI startup landscape has experienced massive growth in recent years, creating countless opportunities for qualified job seekers. If you’re looking for a career change, exploring options in AI startups can secure your professional future. Investments are flowing into this sector, with nearly $42.5 billion investment in 2023 alone. Such massive investments indicate the role of AI startups in today’s economy and the ability of AI companies to pay top dollars to attract the right talent. 

Leveraging AI for Content Creation

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If content creation is your side hustle or primary career, you must use AI to boost and refine your content creation processes. You can begin by listing the most challenging and time-consuming parts of content creation and then explore ways to automate most tasks to a realistically possible degree. 

For example, you can use AI tools to automate video editing for cutting out pauses or silence from hours of recorded footage. AI tools can also help you transform your voice into a legendary character’s talking style, enhance your recording’s audio quality, create thumbnails, etc. These activities can save you hours of work, while fastening content creation processes. 

Incorporating AI in Daily Life

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The best part about AI is its versatility. People can use it for almost every activity to improve productivity and efficiency. For example, you can use AI-powered digital assistants to find instant solutions to challenges you encounter while working.

Install any AI assistant, such as Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, etc., to help you instantly find a recipe, book a cab, schedule an appointment, write an email, etc., while you focus on more important tasks. It’s the easiest way to free up time without delaying any task.   

Participating in AI Hackathons

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People with tech skills can use AI to their advantage by strengthening their career prospects, expanding their professional network, and improving their portfolios.

You can join relevant AI hackathons that provide adequate opportunities to demonstrate your problem-solving, creativity, and rapid prototyping abilities. Your performance can help you get noticed by the biggest tech recruiters, enabling you to land the most lucrative career opportunities.  

Networking through AI Platforms

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If you often attend large events but cannot decide whom to approach for relevant networking, AI tools can help solve your problem.

Sophisticated AI-powered event matchmaking tools help you explore attendees with similar interests, ambitions, career paths, etc. Since these tools can be used before and after networking events, you can effortlessly find professionals to establish mutually beneficial connections. It’s an excellent way to let AI build your professional network for tangible growth. 

Contributing to Open-Source AI Projects

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Since the AI wave is soaring, you can use it to demonstrate your tech skills by participating in open-source AI projects.

These projects enable individuals to collaborate on innovative solutions, gain experience, and build an impressive portfolio. Such contributions are highly regarded in the tech community and can lead to high-paying job opportunities. A GitHub survey revealed that 50% of open-source contributors landed a secure job because of their participation. You must try this method if you’re looking for better career opportunities.   

Utilizing AI for Personalized Learning

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Committing to continuous learning is a timeless way to boost your career, financial health, and personal growth. Fortunately, AI has made it easier for everyone to learn any skill they want. Whether you want to build proficiency in any high demand foreign language or learn a new technical skill, you can use AI tools for adaptive learning.

Besides finding you the best learning content and simplifying complex concepts, AI also provides targeted interventions to ensure you’re learning at your own pace.    

Building an Unignorable Personal Brand

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Personal branding isn’t important to freelancers alone. You must stand out to attract the right target audience if you sell any product or service. Creating a personal brand is one of the most practical ways to achieve it.

You can use AI to automate most parts of the personal branding process, such as creating branding materials, pulling up content ideas from transcribed meetings/conversations, writing engaging posts in your voice, etc. It will help you gain visibility over your competitors and drive more sales/closed deals.  

Using AI to Spot Emerging Market Trends

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Every day, the world is always buzzing with countless trends, news, opinions, controversies, etc. While staying updated on every event or predicting what may happen next humanly impossible, you can use AI to achieve these otherwise impossible tasks.

Using AI’s predictive trend analysis can help you pick profitable side hustles or products for your eCommerce stores. You can also use it to tap into consumer sentiments and seasonal trend analysis to make profitable business decisions. 

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