AI Side Quests: The Definitive Guide

I speak to a growing number of people who are interested in pivoting or angling their career in order to get closer to AI. They see it as the force that will shape the foreseeable future of work and life and want to position themselves centrally on the path toward innovation (and away from disruption).

Now, I’m not one of those people who say “AI won’t take your job, someone using AI will take your job” because (a) I actually think AI will take many jobs, but (b) fear-based marketing doesn’t drive the right motivations.

All that being said, you SHOULD want to infuse AI into whatever you do because its the most exciting, universally applicable innovation since the internet (and only getting better). It has the potential to make you better at your job, with a 24/7 intern at your disposal.

But how do you get started? Let me tell you my story.

My Personal Side Quest Journey

I remember my first conversation with ChatGPT. I fired it up upon its release in late 2022 and asked it to write me a poem. And it did a pretty good job.

Soon after, I decided that my career would be dedicated to this. I went from barely knowing how to spell “AI” in December of 2022 to leading an AI consulting practice in 2 years. Here’s how I did it:

1. Prerequisites: In order to put myself in a position to pursue my AI side project at work, two things needed to be true: (1) I was already a top performer with some latitude to experiment (2) I was an expert in my own product and industry and could combine that vertical expertise with this exciting horizontal technology

2. Research: I experimented, tried to learn the strengths and weaknesses, began to get a feel for the innovation arc as GPT4 replaced GPT3 and so-on. Over time, I built fluency in communicating with AI and could predict where it would excel and where it would fumble. I would force myself to use it in both work and life - trying to train myself to build muscle memory

3. The Pitch: All that research culminated in me building an “AI Roadmap” for my company. I spent a long time thinking about the strengths and core use cases for GenAI and how they could be applied to my product. I built a roadmap I was proud of and took it to my CEO and his leadership team. At first they were dismissive, not wanting to buy into the hype cycle. But eventually my sheet became the beginning of our first AI roadmap and I was able to begin taking these ideas to customers

   

4. Internal Evangelism: Through this process, I became known as a go-to person for AI stuff internally. I led internal trainings and organized our first AI hackathon. I then took what my team built for our hackathon product and begin taking it to customers, capturing anecdotes and using them to justify increased investment. Today, my hackathon product forms the backbone of Quantum Metric’s AI public offering.

5. External Evangelism: At the same time, I started writing externally. Alot. Everything I saw and heard - I wrote down in a journal. And then I took learnings and trends and began to write them publicly. I built a brand.

6. Networking: I talked to founders. I wasn’t afraid of good old fashion cold outbounding on linkedin.

7. Most Importantly, contiunous learning: I constantly try to stay close to the cutting edge of innovation. Listening to podcasts, researching, reading papers and, of course, talking to my AI friends about whats new and hot. Whenever there is a new topic, I go deep. For example, recently I was interested in Model Context Protocol. I started by reading the blog post from Anthropic about it but I didn’t really get it. So then I spent a 30 minute car ride talking to ChatGPT about it, asking really dumb questions and not being embarrassed.

And finally, one day I took the dive. AI went from being a side quest to a main quest.

How to build your side project

1. Be the best. Sorry there is no easy button here. You need to objectively win at your day job if you want the lattitude to experiment. Understand what success looks like in your core role and be at the top of the leaderboard, make yourself indispensable. This gives you leverage to conduct side quests.

2. Define your niche: Applying a horizontal technology to a vertical that you are an expert in is the best way to form a unique perspective

3. Determine your northstar: Be purposeful about what success looks like in your side quest.

4. Build a brand: Write about what you love.