Kathryn DeHart

AI Skills

Love it or hate it, the AI revolution is here. AI has already made a permanent mark on the information ecosystem.

Saying I’m for or against AI isn’t practical and it’s a flawed stance either way. AI will inevitably be beneficial for some things and will inevitably harm others.

So here’s my take: the best thing any of us can do is do our best to understand the technology and the impacts. The better we understand the tools, the closer we’ll get to understanding how it will and won’t help us.

Below are some ways I’ve used AI, how it helped and where it doesn't make things better.

Coding/Web development

I use AI to help me understand and create interactive media, particularly web pages (like the one you’re reading).

I don’t use AI to write any code for me, but rather, debug any broken code and learn new coding concepts/approaches that I’m not familiar with. I’ve got a good basic understanding of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. AI helps me advance that and create more complex and intricate designs.

Research

When I use AI for research, I have it help me scrape the internet for sources.

I prompt AI to generate a curated list of sources that I then review and determine if the sources are legitimate, trustworthy and reliable before using them for any projects.

Data Analysis

One of the most helpful uses of AI, in my opinion, is preliminary data analysis.

When I use AI for data analysis, I usually follow a pretty rigid process. I conduct all the manual cleaning, regressions and transformations myself (though I do sometimes use AI to explain some procedures). Then, I take a stab at interpreting. I get all my observations, interpretations and insights into one *very* rough document. I then ask AI to analyze and interpret the same results and see what nuances appear between my interpretations and AI’s.

This helps me get some clarity around my interpretations and put some structure around how I use data in my work.