The Top AI Capabilities Every Executive Should Be Using Right Now (But Probably Aren't)
Why learning to build apps in ChatGPT, automate spreadsheets in Claude, and schedule research in Gemini matters more than understanding how LLMs work.
I have the privilege of giving an “AI in Action” presentation tomorrow (Wednesday) night with the amazing Lauren Eve Cantor at the Wharton Club of Southern California event in Santa Monica. For those of you in SoCal who would like to attend, the link is available here.
Lauren and I created a great promo commercial to highlight the event - you can see it here (thank you, Sora and Adobe!). What you can do with AI tools these days is amazing. I won’t share what I know Lauren will share with the group tomorrow, but I figured I’d take a minute to share some of the things I plan to cover.
There is so much change happening so fast in AI - and I work with companies every week on this - that it is genuinely challenging to keep up (even for those of us who try to do this full-time). I tried to focus on a few things that would resonate with most organizations and that I could cover within the 20-25 minute time slot I have. Here’s what I’m covering and why I think it’s interesting.
First - opening with a couple of examples of what you can do with Gemini-2.5-Flash-Image (otherwise known as the amazing Nano Banana from Google!). I’ve found that showing people what you can do now with image editing and simple prompts can really grab their attention.
Next, I would like to discuss another remarkable Google product: NotebookLM. NotebookLM lets you create “notebooks” (think repositories) with up to 500 source documents (and a total of 25M tokens) in them and ask questions, create podcasts, create videos, create mind-maps, quizzes, and more. Why is this so useful? When you ask questions about the content you uploaded, the answers are tied 100% to the content in the notebook. It’s not relying on training data, Google search data, or anything else - it can provide an amazing synopsis of the source data. The podcasts, videos, and other content are also absolutely incredible from a learning perspective.
Then I’ll switch to discussing how and why to use ‘projects’ in ChatGPT and Claude (GEMS in Gemini). They are incredibly powerful for creating highly focused content - from having common reference material across all chats, to detailed operating instructions, to a memory that works across an entire project. No matter what your role is at a company, learning to use projects correctly can drive incredible insights and productivity gains.
Did you know you can have ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini create and run Apps in your threaded conversations? Here’s a screenshot from an app that I will use to show how to build it from a simple prompt. The ability to describe and run apps opens up a world of possibilities for everyone in the organization.
Deep research was the first killer agentic app when it launched earlier this year. ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other companies, such as Perplexity, have launched impressive offerings here. But how do you maximize the value of deep research? What does a really good prompt look like? That’s what we’ll cover in the conversation. I still think this is one of the most powerful use cases for AI when it’s used correctly.
Most of us grew up living in Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and PDFs. We’ve been waiting for one of the top LLMs to really work well with these tools - and now Anthropic’s Claude really delivers. I’ll show you how to create multi-tab spreadsheets through a simple prompt that includes formulas that span the entire workbook, color-coding, charts, and more. Did you know that Microsoft has now adopted Claude as its internal model to power Copilot in MS Office apps?
One of the things I love about Claude is the ability to create absolutely stunning visualizations and infographics. ChatGPT and Gemini can create nice ones - but Claude stands apart. I’ll showcase an example of just how good Claude is at doing this - and how to prompt it to refine it to look just the way you want.
Second to last is scheduled tasks. Did you know that both ChatGPT and Gemini (Claude - hello, where are you on this?) can run scheduled activities on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis? Following competitors? Following advancements in new laws or regulations? Fire off a thoughtful prompt and let your favorite LLM do the work for you.
Last, I’m going to go a little technical. Anthropic really defined this market with the launch of Claude Code. The ability to execute CLI (command line interface) tools for programming. But with these tools, you can do so much more. I’m going to walk through a real-world example of why those of us who grew up with DOS prompts should get comfortable using tools like Claude Code, ChatGPT Codex, Gemini CLI, Droid, and more. These tools can unlock absolutely incredible workflows.
There’s a mini bonus discussion I’ll show if you are there in person - something I just did for a client - that before all of these incredible AI tools, I could never have created. AI has unlocked creative potential for all of us if you really learn how to use it.
This was obviously not my typical article, but I felt it was worth sharing to highlight some additional use cases that don’t always get covered. Would you like a copy of the presentation I’m giving tomorrow night? Please shoot me an email to steve@intelligencebyintent.com, and I’ll send it to you.
As always, thanks for reading.
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Contact: steve@intelligencebyintent.com