Untrained AI users cost more and deliver less, education fixes both

The cost of not knowing how to use AI effectively is a significant contributor to increased costs and decreased productivity, according to CloudSmiths CIO Barry Hatfield. He notes that AI illiteracy is a major issue, with users often defaulting to the most powerful models without understanding their needs. This leads to high token consumption and poor results.

In fact, CloudSmiths’ analysis found that some of the heaviest AI users were not producing the best results, highlighting a skills gap. The company believes that education is the key to fixing this issue, and that governance is essential to making it stick.

By educating users on how to use AI effectively, organisations can drive costs down and quality up at the same time. This involves teaching users how to match the model to the use case, and how to use AI where judgment is needed, conventional automation where the steps are known, and a lighter model where a heavier one adds nothing.