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How to use AI in your job, no matter the industry

AI can enhance your work by taking repetitive tasks off your plate, giving you more time to do meaningful work. Explore how you can use AI in your role on edX.

By: Shelby Campbell, Edited by: Valerie Black

Published: February 9, 2026

Key takeaways

  • AI has advanced enough to impact an organization's bottom line, so many business leaders are investing in the technology and rebuilding their daily processes around it.
  • Workers in nearly every industry are interested in reskilling and upskilling to stay competitive in the job market.
  • AI can complete repetitive, menial tasks that take time and energy away from critical operations that require human (soft) skills like creativity.
  • People and companies that employ AI must determine guidelines for responsible use.

The development of commercially available generative AI solutions has brought the global workforce to a turning point. Business and economic leaders believe now is the time to adopt AI solutions. This leaves many workers wondering how they can leverage AI to stay competitive in the job market and in their current roles.

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Why are industries so interested in using AI now?

In the past, AI models didn't have the capabilities to provide enough of a return on investment (ROI) for widespread adoption. But the technology has advanced rapidly since the 2022 release of ChatGPT, and organizations are finding that it finally has the potential to improve productivity, reduce spending, and increase profits.

That shift is already being felt across industries. In edX's Fall 2025 AI learning survey, 64% of workers in STEM and technical fields said they feel pressure to learn or use AI at work, along with 55% in business and finance and 49% in education and social services.

The fast-paced increase in AI's value creation and implementation means that employees must also reskill for an AI-driven job market. Research by edX shows that 51% of workers identified AI skills as important for staying competitive at work, which helps explain why many individuals are focused on building job-relevant AI capabilities.

Understanding AI: What it can and cannot do

Conversations about AI at work often blur what the technology can realistically do. In edX's Fall 2025 survey, 54% of respondents said employers tend to overestimate how much of their job AI can actually automate, which helps make human skills like empathy, emotional intelligence, or critical thinking all the more essential.

AI can help employees complete repetitive or trivial tasks, giving them more time to do meaningful work that requires thoughtfulness, leadership, and other uniquely human traits.

Tips to determine how AI can benefit your workday

  • Explore functionalities and tools like custom AI models and deep research.
  • Identify repetitive or time-consuming tasks that you can offload to AI.
  • Experiment with different models like ChatGPT, Claude, or Bard.
  • Prompt the model to show how it can assist you in various scenarios.

How AI can enhance your daily work

Using AI at work doesn't have to be overwhelming. In edX's Fall 2025 survey, 80% of workers who use AI tools daily reported a positive overall view of recent AI developments.

Workers in nearly every industry can find ways to employ AI and streamline tedious daily processes:

Business and management
Uses
Managers can use AI software to monitor expenses and forecast budgets, automatically flagging anomalies or overspending.
Entrepreneurship
Uses
Entrepreneurs and business analysts can use AI to generate reports from raw sales data, automating data collection, analysis, and visualization.
Financial services
Uses
AI systems can detect and alert financial professionals to suspicious activities and transactions in real-time.
Data science
Uses
Data scientists can deploy AI algorithms to clean and preprocess datasets, reducing manual efforts and enhancing data accuracy.
Healthcare
Uses
Healthcare professionals can use AI to manage and protect sensitive patient data, allowing for quicker, more secure record retrieval.
Information technology/cybersecurity
Uses
AI systems can automatically respond to routine security incidents, freeing your team to handle upgrades and complex threats.
Skilled trades
Uses
AI scheduling tools can delegate jobs based on technician availability, location, and skills.
Supply chain management
Uses
AI can help supply chain managers monitor inventory levels, automatically order supplies, and maintain optimal stock levels.
Sustainable energy
Uses
Sustainable energy professionals can integrate AI-driven energy auditing tools to identify inefficiencies and suggest targeted improvements for conservation.

Ethical uses for AI in your workplace

Because AI uses scraped data to inform its outputs, some employees may be concerned about the ethics of integrating these systems. However, there are many ways organizations can avoid ethical dilemmas while employing AI. Businesses can:

Designate an AI overseer

Start integrating AI into your business by tasking a senior employee or your company's board of directors to oversee the rollout process. This person will be responsible for creating standards and communicating expectations around AI use.

McKinsey's 2025 State of AI report shows that a CEO's role in AI governance directly affects the impact of an AI rollout. When a top leader is involved in the change management process, it helps the rest of the organization prioritize AI use for profitability and productivity.

Create quality benchmarks

To create responsible AI systems, leaders must set an organization-wide standard for the quality of usable outputs. These benchmarks may include guidelines for:

  • Appropriate content types
  • Acceptable tone and language
  • Required review process
  • Accuracy
  • Unauthorized use cases

Devise a phased rollout plan

Change, even with transformative technology, doesn't happen in a day. Organizations can follow project management guidelines to help reach leadership's AI use goals, such as reduced spending. These phases may include:

  • Creating an AI committee.
  • Determining which model to use.
  • Creating AI use standards.
  • Communicating these standards.
  • Releasing access to tools to management.
  • Releasing access to tools to more teams with defined use cases.
  • Releasing access to tools to teams with undefined use cases.

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