Various forms of artificial intelligence have been woven into our technology and work life since the 1960s, starting out in robotics and expanding into expert systems and early chatbots. This has, and will continue to evolve, in ways that make it imperative that security leaders have a solid understanding of how to use and integrate these readily available tools in their day-to-day operations and program deliverables.

Some of the ways that these tools can be used are:

1. Decision Support

• Predicting Trends: AI can analyze data to evaluate and forecast information on a topic, providing executives with evidence-based recommendations.
• Scenario Planning: Simulate different business strategies quickly and see potential outcomes, enabling more informed decisions.

2. Automating Repetitive Tasks

• Email and Calendar Management: AI can prioritize messages, schedule meetings, and even draft responses.
• Routine Reporting: Automate gathering, processing, and summarizing business reports, freeing up executive time.

3. Communication

• AI-Powered Writing: Automatically improve clarity or persuasion of white papers, analysis, memos, presentations, or emails.
• Speech Recognition: Transcribe meetings or generate summaries from voice recordings.

4. Insights

• Intelligence: Real-time monitoring of needed topics with digested summaries sent to your inbox for further review.
• Talent Management: Help identify skills gaps among staff and suggest relevant training/coaching opportunities.

5. Stakeholder Engagement

• Automated Responses: AI-powered chatbots manage customer inquiries 24/7.
• Personalization: Tailor information and recommendations.

6. Risk Management – Insider Threat

• Fraud/Aberrant Behavior Detection: AI can spot patterns of unusual activity faster than humans.
• Compliance Monitoring: Stay ahead of regulations by flagging potential issues in real time.

AI does not replace people— it increases human potential by handling routine tasks, surfacing insights from complex data, and enabling faster, better decisions. For executives, this means more time for strategic thinking, a clearer view of business reality, and the ability to respond rapidly in a dynamic market.

There are a number of tools readily available for immediate use. While they do have free to use options, enhanced features and capabilities are available at nominal costs. Below is a list of four that are worth testing and experimenting with to customize to your requirements.

As powerful and useful as these are, there are some challenges that require constant vigilance and oversight. These are tools to gather massive amounts of information in a few minutes. However, you still must consider the reliability and interpretation of the source of the findings.

The user also needs to hone their critical thinking and cognitive skills to ask and frame their questions/requests in a manner that will produce unfiltered and unbiased results. Be aware that currently these engines are heavily reliant on English language sources, even though they are capable of multi-language translations.

Another notable observation is that as you step through exploring and asking multiple questions, the response starts to notice what the engine senses is your bias or viewpoint. It can also start pandering to you with compliments surrounding your questions. i.e., “Great Questions” “What an insightful view,” The user needs to frame their questions as if you were doing an intelligence interview. Also, make sure if you want information from outside your geographical area include that request or it may assume you want information from sources matching your IP address location.

Remember that the research is only as good as the data set it gathers information from. Do not be surprised that the available data being used may have years of disinformation, false narratives and conclusions as well as political and group think messaging.