Spiceworks Community Digest: How do you use AI?

AI is rapidly moving from a tech curiosity to an indispensable tool for IT professionals. Much like cloud computing or virtualization before it, AI is now an increasingly significant part of daily workflows.

The consensus in the Spiceworks Community is clear: AI is currently most valuable as a “force multiplier” for efficiency, saving time on tedious tasks so IT professionals can focus on high-value problem-solving. However, not everyone is on the same page, with many still choosing to stay away from it.

Troubleshooting and documentation

The poll results show that nearly half of IT professionals who use AI rely on it for the most critical task: figuring out what went wrong. Many leverage AI to quickly analyze massive amounts of dense information that would take a human hours to wade through.

• Vikki3750: “I find its very useful when you have an error log of thousands of lines. I give it the log file and ask it to tell me what causing my issue. It finds it a great deal quicker than I can!”

Scripting, docs, and automation

After troubleshooting, IT professionals are offloading time-consuming, administrative work to AI, making the human workload more strategic.

• Scripting & Code: Writing or reviewing PowerShell, Python, or Bash scripts leverages AI’s ability to quickly generate boilerplate code or find errors.
  • Paganini: “I have had many Powershell scripts fixed by simply giving it to the AI with the error I am getting and a solution is created quickly.”
  • shellstx: “I want to hate it but, it takes my overly complicated powershell scripts and reduces them to like 2 lines.”
• Documentation: Generating knowledge base articles, training materials, and guides is a major time-saver.
  • Patti8216: “Been able to create documentation using kb’s and vendor info for an easier to comprehend step by step specific to our environment.”
  • 2organized: “I also use it to write training scripts. Like: Write me a 6 week Excel Essentials class where the sessions are 20 minute each and the audience consists of primarily 90-year-old parish secretaries.”
• Strategic & Security Uses: AI use drops for more complex, strategic areas like Cybersecurity Threat Detection and Automating Routine Tasks.
  • spiceuser-wy4nv: “It’s also great at parsing and diagnosing complex log files, especially if you feed it plain text logs.”
  • Frank7263: “I occasionally use CoPilot chatbot to give end-users ‘Microsoft’s Answer’ to their questions… The AI simplifies the answer/instructions so that even a monkey could follow…”

The case for skepticism

Despite the utility, a significant portion of the Spiceworks Community remains skeptical. Some either don’t use AI at all or are planning to use it but haven’t started.

• DailyLlama: “Until AI can tell me ‘I don’t know the answer to that’ instead of making something up, it’s of no use to me.”
• SamGates1: “I’ll probably learn how to use it, but avoid actually using it. I think there are enough things in modern life, already measurably turning people’s brains to jelly.”

How are you using AI in your daily role? Let us know on the Spiceworks Community.