September 14, 2025 • 11 mins
** Book in for Inventium’s GenAI Productivity Upgrade here: https://inventium.com.au/genai-cohort/ **
Most people use AI like a polite assistant: “do this, write that, draft this.” The problem? It rarely pushes back or challenges your thinking - leaving your blind spots intact.
In this episode, Inventium’s AI expert Neo Aplin joins me to share how to flip the script and use AI as a creative collaborator. You’ll learn:
- Why AI naturally behaves like a sycophantic assistant - and how to change that
- How to use prompts to make AI act as a devil’s advocate
- Ways to test how your ideas or presentations will land with different audiences
- How to use AI for “jobs to be done” brainstorming and innovation
- Why using AI for perspective-shifting is better than not testing your ideas at all
If you want AI to make you smarter (not just faster) this episode will show you how.
My latest book The Health Habit is out now. You can order a copy here: https://www.amantha.com/the-health-habit/
Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)
If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha-imber.ck.page/subscribe
Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.
Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au
Credits:
Host: Amantha Imber
Sound Engineer: Martin Imber
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
AI is great at doing it what we tell it
to do, but that can also be a problem. Instead
of challenging us, it often acts like a polite, even
sycophantic assistant, doing exactly as asked without pointing out flaws
or blind spots. Today, I'm joined by Inventium's AI expert,
(00:22):
Neo Applin, to explore how we can use AI differently
as a devil's advocate, a creative partner, and even as
a stand in audience to help spot weaknesses in our
thinking and uncover new perspectives. In this chat, you are
going to learn some very practical prompts to make AI
your best and most useful collaborator, not just your obedient assistant.
(00:52):
Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals,
and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm your host doctor
to Amantha Imba. Two years ago, I completely overhauled how
I work with Genai, and I am now saving over
forty hours every single week. That is no exaggeration, and
(01:13):
that is exactly why my company, Inventium, created the Genai
Productivity Upgrade. It's a twelve week course designed to move
you from Jenai dabbler to productivity machine. There is no fluff,
just practical strategies that will pay off from week one,
saving you at least ten hours every single week. We
(01:34):
are going to teach you how to automate the grant work,
use AI as your second brain to excel at your job.
Learn how to create AI agents that we knew back
hours every time you use them, and so much more so.
Whether you're a complete beginner or already using AI, we
have got you covered. We start with prompting fundamentals and
we go all the way through to advanced automations and
(01:56):
agentic AI. We kick off on October fifteen and spots
are limited. Visit inventtium dot com, dot au, forward slash
genai hyphen cohort to secure your place now And yes
that's a long link. It's also in the show notes.
If you're looking for it and you've literally got nothing
to lose, there's a seven day money back guarantee. So
(02:16):
go to the show notes, hop on the link and
join our program today. So why do we need AI
to help us point out our blind spots? Like, what's
the problem that it's solving here?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
We as humans, we're lazy. We were supposed to be
cognitively lazy. What that means is if we saw everything
and we did everything that we needed to do, we
would run out of time and energy. So what we
do is we fall into patterns, and those patterns might
be we do the same thing every single day, the
same way, and that's fine for some things. But when
(02:49):
you're doing things like you know, strategy or reports or
things that are different than having a different perspective and
being challenged on those things is really valuable. Because AI,
believe it or not, it's been built as a helpful assistant,
so for some reason, it always then becomes a little
bit like a cheerleader, sometimes a bit sycophantic, but in
(03:10):
reality it'll go along with any pattern you want. So
getting AI to instead of going along with those patterns,
to actually challenge you and ask questions, it becomes an
awesome creativity tool and helps you get out of those
ruts a little bit unstuck.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
So how do we turn AI from being this sycophantic,
obedient assistant into a collaborative kind of sparring partner.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
You tell it too, believe it or not, So there's
different ways you can do it. By one, you can
just say, hey, I want you to challenge me in
the ways that I'm thinking things like that. I love
using it as a devil's advocate. So it might be
for a particular piece of work. You might say, Hey,
I'm doing this. Here's the work. I want you to
(03:57):
review it from this perspective. What ways can it be improved?
What am I missing? Are there any things that I've
gotten wrong here? Getting it to really review and critique
what you're doing and provide suggestions is an excellent, excellent
way to do it. Also, other ways just might be simple,
which is is there a better way to do this?
Or Hey, for this audience, what would they want to
(04:18):
see that's not there? Are there other ways I can
approach the task. You can ask these questions. Now, it
doesn't always come up with gold every time because it
doesn't know all the background and all those kind of things,
but it does have different perspectives and it's up to
you to go, Wow, that's a really good one. I
didn't think of that, and then you can incorporate that
in your work.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, I might say that's something I love about AI
that it can help me see things from completely different
perspectives and you know, put myself in people's shoes that
I would you know very little about. So what tips
do you have on how we can get the AI
to help us really easily see things from are the
(05:00):
people's customers perspectives.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
We do things for people always with clients or customers
or staff members or other team members. So you can
get AI to step in the shoes of these people
just by telling AI who those people are and what
their perspectives are. So it might be a customer, it
might be a client, might be a boss, it might
be a prospective persona that you might have, so like
(05:27):
a busy person with these particular needs, a downstream user
in the process. So I want you to say to AI,
I want you to be in the shoes of this person.
Want to look at it from their perspective? How would
they look at this, What would they want to see
that's not there? Which bits would they get worried about,
which questions would they have, those kind of things, But
(05:50):
really be clear about the kind of person and the perspective,
and AI can really jump in those shoes very effectively.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Now, a lot of listeners would be giving presentations as
part of their work and trying to come up with
new ideas whether that be products or services or all
sorts of things. How can AI help test these things,
whether it be a presentation that's pretty high stakes, or
maybe some kind of an idea that you're thinking about
(06:17):
for your customers.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
First, I got to say that AI can't actually be
that person, can't actually be that audience member, but it
can be a clue. It can be a hint as
to what that person might think. So think of this
as like a pre test or a sparring partner as
opposed to the final boss. But you can give it
(06:39):
that perspective. You say, here's the audience, here's a perspective
they'll probably have, and then ask it where are the
bits that they might find too risky, Where are the
bits that in my presentation they might find boring or
they might lose interest, or where are the bits that
they might find surprising and they may want more information
those kind of things. Also, you can ask then ask
(07:01):
AI what the kind of perspectives are of these people,
What are the jobs that they are trying to achieve,
what are their needs, what are their desires, what are
their goals? And then you can figure out whether your
work will fit within those as well. So it's really
like an empathy tool from a robot, which sounds ridiculous,
but it's great as a first step before you then
(07:21):
go to the actual human out there, so you can
then potentially something have something which lands better for you
and for them.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah, I think it's really interesting in the context of
innovation work, which obviously Inventium does a lot of, and
previously to really get any idea or any kind of
feedback around an idea of what customers think, you'd have
to spend quite quite a bit of effort finding customers,
talking to them and so on. And what I really
(07:52):
like about AI is you can almost get that first pass. Like, yes,
as you say, it doesn't replace human feedback, but it
is better than just going blindly into creating a business
case where you haven't really put yourself in the customer's shoes.
What like, do you have some go to prompts that
(08:13):
you use when you're trying to get AI to adopt
a certain persona or customer profile, Like how do you
typically approach that?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
It depends on what you're doing, of course, but it's
about giving AI the brief so this is my customer,
these are the kind of needs that they might have
if they've got a particular role. So I'm doing a
presentation to the senior executive team. Don't just say senior
executive team. Say to AI, who's on that team? Say
to AI all the things you know about those people
(08:49):
and what their jobs are and what they're trying to achieve.
If you even add in things like I don't know
strategies and things like that for the senior executive team,
then we'll know that as well, but also stomers and clients.
So you can say, these are the types of customers
that we've got, Here's what they've done in the past,
these are the kind of problems they've had in the past.
(09:09):
More information you can give AI the better. But even
with that, AI can still come up with some other
ideas for you, which is great. So what you could
say is I know very little about these people AI,
what are the things that they would want? What are
their drivers? We are their goals and get AI to effectively,
you know, put itself in those shoes and it can
(09:30):
come up with some amazing things. So instead of being
cold and not being prepared here you're pretty warm and warm,
warm to medium warm and hot before you even get
in front of their customer because you've been practicing with AI,
and AI is effectively giving you different perspectives from different
people before you get to that final meeting, that final presentation,
(09:53):
that final sales pitch.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Okay, so a lot of different ways to use AI
to help us point out our blind spots. If a
listener was going to just do one thing differently today
in how they work with AI, what would you recommend
that be?
Speaker 2 (10:12):
First off, don't let AI be you me yes man,
so tell it work with me, be a critical, inspiring partner,
help me improve my things, and then get it to
help you to review your things, just as if it
was your customer, your client, your audience, and you'll be
surprised of what it comes up with. Now, don't accept
(10:33):
every idea that it has, don't accept every critique that
it has because it may not be appropriate for you,
but you might find that there's some amazing things in there.
If you do want to incorporate with your work, you do.
So don't let it be your yes man.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Let it.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Know what your clients and your audience are, and then
take some of those pieces of advice so that you
can actually improve your work.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Awesome, Thank you so much for sharing such great advice. Again, Neo,
thank you. I hope you are now feeling inspired to
use your AI in a different way today and turn
it from a sycophantic assistant into a true thinking partner
that actually critiques your thinking rather than just agrees with
(11:16):
everything that you say. If you are looking to take
your AI skills up to the next level, Inventium's GENAI
productivity upgrade is kicking off on October fifteen, and there
is a link to more info and bookings in the
show notes. If you like today's show, make sure you
hit follow on your podcast app to be alerted when
(11:37):
new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded on the
traditional land of the Warrengery people, part of the Cool
and Nation. A big thank you to Martin Nimber for
doing the sound mix.
AI is great at doing it what we tell it
to do, but that can also be a problem. Instead
of challenging us, it often acts like a polite, even
sycophantic assistant, doing exactly as asked without pointing out flaws
or blind spots. Today, I'm joined by Inventium's AI expert,
(00:22):
Neo Applin, to explore how we can use AI differently
as a devil's advocate, a creative partner, and even as
a stand in audience to help spot weaknesses in our
thinking and uncover new perspectives. In this chat, you are
going to learn some very practical prompts to make AI
your best and most useful collaborator, not just your obedient assistant.
(00:52):
Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals,
and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm your host doctor
to Amantha Imba. Two years ago, I completely overhauled how
I work with Genai, and I am now saving over
forty hours every single week. That is no exaggeration, and
(01:13):
that is exactly why my company, Inventium, created the Genai
Productivity Upgrade. It's a twelve week course designed to move
you from Jenai dabbler to productivity machine. There is no fluff,
just practical strategies that will pay off from week one,
saving you at least ten hours every single week. We
(01:34):
are going to teach you how to automate the grant work,
use AI as your second brain to excel at your job.
Learn how to create AI agents that we knew back
hours every time you use them, and so much more so.
Whether you're a complete beginner or already using AI, we
have got you covered. We start with prompting fundamentals and
we go all the way through to advanced automations and
(01:56):
agentic AI. We kick off on October fifteen and spots
are limited. Visit inventtium dot com, dot au, forward slash
genai hyphen cohort to secure your place now And yes
that's a long link. It's also in the show notes.
If you're looking for it and you've literally got nothing
to lose, there's a seven day money back guarantee. So
(02:16):
go to the show notes, hop on the link and
join our program today. So why do we need AI
to help us point out our blind spots? Like, what's
the problem that it's solving here?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
We as humans, we're lazy. We were supposed to be
cognitively lazy. What that means is if we saw everything
and we did everything that we needed to do, we
would run out of time and energy. So what we
do is we fall into patterns, and those patterns might
be we do the same thing every single day, the
same way, and that's fine for some things. But when
(02:49):
you're doing things like you know, strategy or reports or
things that are different than having a different perspective and
being challenged on those things is really valuable. Because AI,
believe it or not, it's been built as a helpful assistant,
so for some reason, it always then becomes a little
bit like a cheerleader, sometimes a bit sycophantic, but in
(03:10):
reality it'll go along with any pattern you want. So
getting AI to instead of going along with those patterns,
to actually challenge you and ask questions, it becomes an
awesome creativity tool and helps you get out of those
ruts a little bit unstuck.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
So how do we turn AI from being this sycophantic,
obedient assistant into a collaborative kind of sparring partner.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
You tell it too, believe it or not, So there's
different ways you can do it. By one, you can
just say, hey, I want you to challenge me in
the ways that I'm thinking things like that. I love
using it as a devil's advocate. So it might be
for a particular piece of work. You might say, Hey,
I'm doing this. Here's the work. I want you to
(03:57):
review it from this perspective. What ways can it be improved?
What am I missing? Are there any things that I've
gotten wrong here? Getting it to really review and critique
what you're doing and provide suggestions is an excellent, excellent
way to do it. Also, other ways just might be simple,
which is is there a better way to do this?
Or Hey, for this audience, what would they want to
(04:18):
see that's not there? Are there other ways I can
approach the task. You can ask these questions. Now, it
doesn't always come up with gold every time because it
doesn't know all the background and all those kind of things,
but it does have different perspectives and it's up to
you to go, Wow, that's a really good one. I
didn't think of that, and then you can incorporate that
in your work.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, I might say that's something I love about AI
that it can help me see things from completely different
perspectives and you know, put myself in people's shoes that
I would you know very little about. So what tips
do you have on how we can get the AI
to help us really easily see things from are the
(05:00):
people's customers perspectives.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
We do things for people always with clients or customers
or staff members or other team members. So you can
get AI to step in the shoes of these people
just by telling AI who those people are and what
their perspectives are. So it might be a customer, it
might be a client, might be a boss, it might
be a prospective persona that you might have, so like
(05:27):
a busy person with these particular needs, a downstream user
in the process. So I want you to say to AI,
I want you to be in the shoes of this person.
Want to look at it from their perspective? How would
they look at this, What would they want to see
that's not there? Which bits would they get worried about,
which questions would they have, those kind of things, But
(05:50):
really be clear about the kind of person and the perspective,
and AI can really jump in those shoes very effectively.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Now, a lot of listeners would be giving presentations as
part of their work and trying to come up with
new ideas whether that be products or services or all
sorts of things. How can AI help test these things,
whether it be a presentation that's pretty high stakes, or
maybe some kind of an idea that you're thinking about
(06:17):
for your customers.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
First, I got to say that AI can't actually be
that person, can't actually be that audience member, but it
can be a clue. It can be a hint as
to what that person might think. So think of this
as like a pre test or a sparring partner as
opposed to the final boss. But you can give it
(06:39):
that perspective. You say, here's the audience, here's a perspective
they'll probably have, and then ask it where are the
bits that they might find too risky, Where are the
bits that in my presentation they might find boring or
they might lose interest, or where are the bits that
they might find surprising and they may want more information
those kind of things. Also, you can ask then ask
(07:01):
AI what the kind of perspectives are of these people,
What are the jobs that they are trying to achieve,
what are their needs, what are their desires, what are
their goals? And then you can figure out whether your
work will fit within those as well. So it's really
like an empathy tool from a robot, which sounds ridiculous,
but it's great as a first step before you then
(07:21):
go to the actual human out there, so you can
then potentially something have something which lands better for you
and for them.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah, I think it's really interesting in the context of
innovation work, which obviously Inventium does a lot of, and
previously to really get any idea or any kind of
feedback around an idea of what customers think, you'd have
to spend quite quite a bit of effort finding customers,
talking to them and so on. And what I really
(07:52):
like about AI is you can almost get that first pass. Like, yes,
as you say, it doesn't replace human feedback, but it
is better than just going blindly into creating a business
case where you haven't really put yourself in the customer's shoes.
What like, do you have some go to prompts that
(08:13):
you use when you're trying to get AI to adopt
a certain persona or customer profile, Like how do you
typically approach that?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
It depends on what you're doing, of course, but it's
about giving AI the brief so this is my customer,
these are the kind of needs that they might have
if they've got a particular role. So I'm doing a
presentation to the senior executive team. Don't just say senior
executive team. Say to AI, who's on that team? Say
to AI all the things you know about those people
(08:49):
and what their jobs are and what they're trying to achieve.
If you even add in things like I don't know
strategies and things like that for the senior executive team,
then we'll know that as well, but also stomers and clients.
So you can say, these are the types of customers
that we've got, Here's what they've done in the past,
these are the kind of problems they've had in the past.
(09:09):
More information you can give AI the better. But even
with that, AI can still come up with some other
ideas for you, which is great. So what you could
say is I know very little about these people AI,
what are the things that they would want? What are
their drivers? We are their goals and get AI to effectively,
you know, put itself in those shoes and it can
(09:30):
come up with some amazing things. So instead of being
cold and not being prepared here you're pretty warm and warm,
warm to medium warm and hot before you even get
in front of their customer because you've been practicing with AI,
and AI is effectively giving you different perspectives from different
people before you get to that final meeting, that final presentation,
(09:53):
that final sales pitch.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Okay, so a lot of different ways to use AI
to help us point out our blind spots. If a
listener was going to just do one thing differently today
in how they work with AI, what would you recommend
that be?
Speaker 2 (10:12):
First off, don't let AI be you me yes man,
so tell it work with me, be a critical, inspiring partner,
help me improve my things, and then get it to
help you to review your things, just as if it
was your customer, your client, your audience, and you'll be
surprised of what it comes up with. Now, don't accept
(10:33):
every idea that it has, don't accept every critique that
it has because it may not be appropriate for you,
but you might find that there's some amazing things in there.
If you do want to incorporate with your work, you do.
So don't let it be your yes man.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Let it.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Know what your clients and your audience are, and then
take some of those pieces of advice so that you
can actually improve your work.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Awesome, Thank you so much for sharing such great advice. Again, Neo,
thank you. I hope you are now feeling inspired to
use your AI in a different way today and turn
it from a sycophantic assistant into a true thinking partner
that actually critiques your thinking rather than just agrees with
(11:16):
everything that you say. If you are looking to take
your AI skills up to the next level, Inventium's GENAI
productivity upgrade is kicking off on October fifteen, and there
is a link to more info and bookings in the
show notes. If you like today's show, make sure you
hit follow on your podcast app to be alerted when
(11:37):
new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded on the
traditional land of the Warrengery people, part of the Cool
and Nation. A big thank you to Martin Nimber for
doing the sound mix.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.