How to Build an AI Assistant for Any Challenge

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

You might have your teams and organization implementing new AI tools, but how much have you experimented with them yourself? Alexandra Samuel is a tech speaker and journalist, and she says many leaders are still just scratching the surface of AI by using things like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot as supercharged search engines. Instead, she recommends managers at all levels start playing with AI at the next level, building assistants to help in all sorts of functions to not just find efficiencies, but help in decision-making and strategy as well. She explains the ways she uses AI tools for everything from training to project management to coaching and strategic advice - and how you can build your own assistants to do the same. Samuel is the author of the HBR article "How to Build Your Own AI Assistant."

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Before we begin, I want to tell you about another podcast called Think Fast Talk Smart.
0:05.9	Each week, host and Stanford Graduate School of Business Lecturer Matt Abrams teaches you communication skills,
0:13.2	like how to excel at small talk, write winning emails, and keep your nerves in check when speaking in front of crowds.
0:20.4	Communicate better to get ahead.
0:22.8	Check out Think Fast, Talk Smart, wherever you get podcasts.
0:37.2	And I'm Ad Beard.
0:38.8	And I'm Adi Ignatius, and this is the HBR IdeaCast.
0:49.2	Adi, I have a confession for you.
0:52.1	Okay, I'm all ears.
0:53.5	We write so much about generative AI, but I am not really using it all that much.
0:59.6	How about you?
1:00.9	Well, I was a really quick adopter.
1:04.6	I mean, I was sort of ahead of everybody, but finding, sustaining use cases, you know, I'm not the greatest on that.
1:10.5	I guarantee you, we are not
1:11.7	alone in that. I spoke to Kareem Likani. Recently, he's an HBS professor and an expert on AI in the
1:18.0	workplace. And he was talking about CEOs who are all talking about AI. They're talking to a great
1:22.3	game and they're talking to their shareholders about AI. But in his view, very few CEOs are actually
1:27.3	using it or actually
1:28.5	understand its potential. So I think there's a collective, we have to do more, Alison.
1:34.3	Yeah, I think that most people who are using it, it's sort of a supercharged search engine,
1:41.7	it's a drafter of what I would probably consider to be not good
1:46.9	reports or articles. Moving from the sort of basics to something more complex and spending the
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Harvard Business Review, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Harvard Business Review and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.