BriefingUpdated 4 days ago
You don’t need to be a tech expert to lead in the age of AI.
Beyond simple chatbots, a new wave of practical AI tools and autonomous agents is reshaping how work gets done in every function. You don’t need to know how to build these agents — you need to know how to find the vendors, what to ask, what to assess, and how to use them to accelerate and redesign your own work. Don’t be intimidated. We’re here to help you get started.
Start with your team
Eight functions · Choose one- FinanceReconciliation, fraud detection, forecastingWhat AI does here: Close the books faster, catch invoice errors before payment, and run real-time cash flow scenarios.Explore Finance AI tools
- HRHiring, employee support, onboardingWhat AI does here: Source qualified candidates faster, handle routine HR tickets automatically, and free up hours every week.Explore HR AI tools
- LegalContract review, redlines, regulationWhat AI does here: Speed up first-pass contract reviews, flag high-risk terms automatically, and keep outside legal spend down.Explore Legal AI tools
- MarketingAudience insight, content, brand safetyWhat AI does here: Shorten the time from creative brief to launch, scale asset production, and keep brand guardrails tight.Explore Marketing AI tools
- ProductFeedback synthesis, specs, rapid testingWhat AI does here: Turn thousands of customer reviews into roadmap priorities, and validate feature ideas before building.Explore Product AI tools
- Customer SupportTicket resolution, live rep assistanceWhat AI does here: Deflect repetitive enquiries automatically, equip reps with instant answers, and cut resolution times.Explore Customer Support AI tools
- SalesPipeline intelligence, meeting summariesWhat AI does here: Research prospects instantly, automate post-call admin, and flag deals that are slipping.Explore Sales AI tools
- Operations & Supply ChainWarehouse counts, fleet upkeep, freight trackingWhat AI does here: Cut warehouse counting time from days to minutes, catch a fleet breakdown before it happens, and know where a shipment actually is without calling the carrier.Explore Operations & Supply Chain AI tools
New practical guide
What can an AI agent do for you?
An AI agent can take a bounded job, work across the tools you already use and bring back a result for review. Learn which agents fit your work, what to hand off first and where a person stays in control.
- Find your first job
Start with a repeatable task that has a clear finish line.
- Meet the right kind of agent
From inbox and marketing help to research, operations and customer calls.
- Use it with confidence
Keep meaningful approvals with a person while the agent earns trust.
One useful job. Clear boundaries. A human at the important decisions.
Real results and real lessons
See how established companies are deploying AI — and what happened when they did.HR · Asymbl
Polly now answers the routine benefits and time-off questions that used to land on a person, which freed up about 10 hours of HR work a week.
The takeaway The AI here is deliberately narrow: a Slack chatbot that only answers what it's been explicitly trained on, and hands off anything requiring judgment to a human instead of guessing. That limit is what made it safe to let employees talk to it directly — nobody gets a wrong benefits answer with no person accountable for it. If your HR team's time is going to answering the same handful of policy questions over and over, that's the specific, boring problem this kind of tool solves — not the harder judgment calls.
HR Brew · Jul 2026Product · Algolia
The new pricing page variant beat the old one by 15% on its target metric, an estimated six-figure effect on sales pipeline.
The takeaway The AI didn't just suggest a better pricing page — it wrote and built the working test variants itself, on-brand, with no developer involved. If your team's test ideas die in an engineering queue rather than a lack of ideas, this is what removing that specific bottleneck looks like: hours instead of a multi-week wait for a developer to become free. (One caveat: Amplitude's own writeup never names which metric moved 15% — real, but not fully specified.)
Amplitude blog · Jun 2026Sales · monday.com
Amanda, an AI voice agent that qualifies every inbound lead by phone, cut demo-request response time from 24 hours to under two minutes.
The takeaway Speed to lead is where this paid off fastest and most measurably — the 24-hours-to-2-minutes number is the kind of gain that shows up in pipeline within a quarter, before you'd see anything from the harder, judgment-heavy parts of the funnel.
Growth Unhinged, Kyle Poyar · Jun 2026Customer Support · KlarnaLearn from this
AI handled two-thirds of chats at its peak — work Klarna said was equal to 853 employees — but support costs still rose to $50M in Q3 2025 from $42M the year before, after Klarna reversed course and rehired.
The lesson The AI wasn't wrong to exist, it was deployed past its competence: genuinely excellent at the repetitive two-thirds, genuinely bad at the rest, and Klarna cut headcount before drawing that line.
CX Dive · Nov 2025
Free AI courses
11 courses · checked by handEveryone from OpenAI to the University of Helsinki now gives away an AI course — far more than anyone has time to sort through. We collected the 11 worth taking, grouped by how you learn: hands-on building, courses for your own department, and foundations, from a one-hour beginner sprint to a twelve-week course for people who code. Each card says who it suits, how long it takes, and where money shows up — 9 of the 11 never ask for any.
- FreeBeginner to intermediate
AI Summer Adventure
Nufar Gaspar, with The AI Daily Brief and Superintelligent
Twenty-three hands-on stations in three tiers, at your own pace — from the tools you already own to workflows that run on their own. Free with an account.
What you actually build
- Everyday productivity assistantsTier one works on the daily grind — turning messy notes and transcripts into something you would actually send.
- Custom knowledge assistantsTier two builds assistants that answer from documents you supply, rather than from whatever the model happens to know.
- Autonomous agents and multi-tool workflowsTier three chains steps together so a task runs without you sitting over it.
- FreeBeginner to intermediate
AI for Finance and Accounting
FreeAcademy.ai
Twelve applied lessons worked directly against financial statements, reports and spreadsheets. No signup needed to start; the certificate takes a final exam.
What you actually build
- Statement analysis you can checkPulling variance drivers and ratios out of a P&L or cash flow statement, with the working visible.
- A repeatable board-reporting templateTurning a monthly close into narrative commentary, the same way every month.
- Pressure-testing a forecastRunning scenarios against your own assumptions and flagging expense entries that look wrong.
“If you can use a spreadsheet and write an email, you can use these workflows” FreeAcademy.ai, from the course page
- FreeBeginner
Elements of AI
University of Helsinki and MinnaLearn
Interactive quizzes and logic problems — no maths, no code, no videos. Helsinki's own count: two million students. It predates chatbots, so it teaches the foundations rather than ChatGPT.
What you actually build
- What the technology is actually doingHow a prediction gets made, and where machine learning differs from ordinary software that follows rules.
- Judgement about its limitsBias in training data, and the failures that are built into the method rather than fixable by a better vendor.
“Conceptually rigorous without being technical” Hashmeta review · May 2026
Have a specific question? Ask away.
Try plain-English questions like “how are HR teams using AI for onboarding?” or “best AI tools for contract redlining”.
The essays
Liat's Insights
Essays at the intersection of AI, strategy, and leadership. Read them on the blog, or get each new one by email.
