Marketplace Tech Making AI work — for work
9 snips
Feb 3, 2026 
Christopher Mims, Wall Street Journal technology columnist and author of How to AI, offers practical advice on using AI at work. He explains treating AI like a reliable helper for routine tasks. He shares real-world uses from ad creation to brainstorming. He also discusses the broader, often invisible role of AI in business and its short-term labor impacts.
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Plan For Change Management
- Change management is essential when introducing AI because workflows must be updated collectively.
- Christopher Mims advises planning for time and coordination to retrain teams, not just deploying tools.
Managers Overestimate AI Time Savings
- Bosses overestimate AI time savings compared with workers' reports, creating a big disconnect.
- Christopher Mims warns this gap fuels pressures to keep or cut headcount despite reality on the ground.
AI Like An Assembly-Line Worker
- Treat agentic AI like an assembly-line robot by assigning reliable, basic tasks to it.
- Mims shows this yields consistent productivity gains when AI handles repeatable assistance roles.
