Summary
Trust your own judgment and abilities. Use AI to improve efficiency, but remember that creation and critical thinking are human responsibilities. AI should assist, not replace your unique voice or expertise.
5 AI Takeaways from a Fortune 100 Comms Leader You Need to Know
Austin Roth-Eagle, head of Cisco’s AI Acceleration Office and former CEO communications strategist, shares actionable insights with PRDaily about workflows, where AI fits best, and the use of AI to scale authentic content while avoiding over-reliance on automation, and most of all the continued need for human voices and oversight in content development.
AI is a Tool, Not a Replacement
What’s something AI does that genuinely surprised you, and something it still gets wrong?
- Roth-Eagle: “We’re seeing huge progress in efficiency, but taste, judgment, and voice are still critical.”
- EJP: He means AI is a tool, not a replacement. Your voice, tone, opinions, and natural communication should remain. AI cannot replicate your experiences and insights.
- EJP: If someone else does the work for you, it lacks your impact.
Human Voices Matter
“There’s a difference between using a tool to build content in your voice and having a tool replace your voice.”
How do you define your voice in a world where AI can mimic tone?
- Roth-Eagle: “Human judgment matters. Your job is still to have a unique point of view.”
- EJP: It’s still your work; ensure your voice, personality, and even cultural tonality and nuances show, not an empty AI substitute. For example, saying “That’s a vibe!” to the appropriate audience is much more you.
Human Involvement Ensures Human Connection
Do you have a checklist for deciding what’s ready to publish versus what needs a human pass?
- Roth-Eagle: “Pre-AI, you’d research the landscape, identify your unique angle, build an outline, draft, and then edit. When you break it down like that, it becomes clear where AI should and shouldn’t play a role. So it’s not just oversight at the end — it’s oversight across everything. The human voice remains the most important step throughout.”
- EJP: Human oversight and insight connect us with others. We appreciate what people create and our unique perspectives, not what machine-learning technology tells us to say. Leverage AI for research and refinement, and not from start to finish.
Finding the Intersection Between the AI Tool & Human Connection
How should early-career professionals think about building their voice today?
- Roth-Eagle: “The best results come from people with deep domain expertise and strong AI fluency.”
- EJP: People who use AI as a tool, for what it was designed for, can generate strategic and useful results.
- EJP: Young professionals should find that intersection between a tool to leverage and their human experience and ability to truly connect — become an expert in something like writing or communications, and understand what good, mediocre, and bad look like. That’s taste and judgment, which AI models don’t have and may never have.
- EJP: You should find what it is that you can do, excel at it, to the point where you know what makes what you do good. What separates us from AI now is judgment. AI will spit out whatever it comes across, while humans differentiate what’s good from what’s bad.
Read the Austin Roth-Eagle full interview.
