I'm a senior principal engineer. I use AI at work, but some tasks you should do from scratch — here's how I decide.
Brandon Pedersen. Courtesy of Brandon Pedersen GoTo engineer Brandon Pedersen says people should never blindly trust AI-generated work. Pedersen suggests that you ask AI for its sources, follow the links, and check its reasoning. He follows this two-second rule: If you can do it quickly yourself, skip the AI assistance. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brandon Pedersen, a 41-year-old senior principal engineer at GoTo, based in the Salt Lake City area. The following has been edited for length and clarity. As a senior principal engineer at GoTo, where I started working in 2013, I'm the technical lead of an AI enablement team responsible for maintaining AI platforms, creating new tools that help people do their jobs, and providing training and consulting support across the company. On any given day, I could be helping train a team to write better AI prompts or automating parts of their workflow through an AI skill or a custom-built application. We also collect use cases from people across the company who want to automate tasks. We evaluate what will have the biggest impact on the business and decide what's worth automating and how we can help enable teams to build
English
I'm a senior principal engineer. I use AI at work, but some tasks you should do from scratch — here's how I decide.
Brandon Pedersen. Courtesy of Brandon Pedersen GoTo engineer Brandon Pedersen says people should never blindly trust AI-generated work. Pedersen suggests that you ask AI for its sources, follow the links, and check its reasoning. He follows this two-second rule: If you can do it quickly yourself, skip the AI assistance. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brandon Pedersen, a 41-year-old senior principal engineer at GoTo, based in the Salt Lake City area. The following has been edited for length and clarity. As a senior principal engineer at GoTo, where I started working in 2013, I'm the technical lead of an AI enablement team responsible for maintaining AI platforms, creating new tools that help people do their jobs, and providing training and consulting support across the company. On any given day, I could be helping train a team to write better AI prompts or automating parts of their workflow through an AI skill or a custom-built application. We also collect use cases from people across the company who want to automate tasks. We evaluate what will have the biggest impact on the business and decide what's worth automating and how we can help enable teams to build
