A Guide to Collaborating With ChatGPT for Work

Imagine what you could accomplish if you had a team of colleagues you could lean on whenever you had to tackle a task that wasn’t in your wheelhouse, or whenever you got stuck, or whenever you needed a piece of information that wasn’t at your fingertips. And imagine if those colleagues were available whenever you needed them—and replied instantly!

Well, those colleagues are now here, in the form of generative AIs that will be embedded into more of our work environment over the coming months and years. Give them prompts about what you want, and they will retrieve information, draft documents, create images or even write computer code.

As of now, AI collaborators are most readily accessible in the form of image-generation tools like MidJourney and DALL-E, text-generation tools like ChatGPT (which can produce everything from essays to data tables, and is especially powerful if you spring for access to the latest model, GPT-4), and Bing’s new chat-basedweb searching. (OpenAI’s GPT is the “large-language model” under the hood of both Bing and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.) Also, Microsoft and Google have both announced that generative AI will soon be embedded in tools like Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Teams and Google Meet, as it will be in many other products in the coming months and years. And generative AI is evolving so quickly that the capabilities of a given system may change from one week to the next.

I’ve helped organizations develop and use digital collaboration tools for more than 25 years, and have long used AI as part of my data-analysis work, but there’s something different about generative AI. Traditional search engines and word processors were tools, and a tool has to adapt to you. If you don’t like how it works, you have to choose a different tool.

But working with generative AI feels a lot more like working with another human. And you can only do your best work as a team if you adapt to one another, learning to make the most of your respective strengths, and to mitigate one another’s weaknesses.

Here’s how to get the best out of these new collegial relationships.

Imagine you’re working with a junior colleague

Start your work with AIs just the way you would start out working with somebody with less experience: Give them small assignments, get a feel for their strengths and limitations, and then gradually scale up. Start with something really low-stakes. My own explorations of GPT began with asking it to write silly poems and stories—a project with zero professional risk.

Figure out where you need help.

Once you’re ready to try your new collaborators on actual work assignments, think about where it is you could really use some support. What are the tasks you currently delegate to or rely on a colleague to deliver? What are the tasks you wish you had colleagues to help with?

For example, I would love to have an assistant who could reformat invoices to meet the requirements of our records-keeping system. Alas, I don’t have one. But I realized I could feed a table of data to GPT (along with one sample invoice), and get the info back as a series of identically structured invoices.

Get specific

Like a junior colleague, your AI collaborators benefit from getting really specific assignments and instructions: A prompt like “Help me think about my Acme presentation” would be too vague for a freshly hired human—and it is too vague for an AI, too. You’ll get better results with a prompt like, “Please outline the 5 key points for my Acme presentation, by combining this outline from my recent SmithCo presentation with the key insights in this page from Acme’s latest corporate report.” (Since there’s a limit on how long your prompts can be, you may need to paste this in over a couple of prompts, but you can tell an AI to “stand by” while you feed it information and then provide its answer when you finish your final input with a note like “Provide a draft now.”)

Provide feedback

As you start working together, give your AI colleagues feedback on how they are doing, just as you would a human. If you don’t get the results you want from your initial prompt, follow up with a comment like, “That was good, but make it shorter,” or “that is the right length, but incorporate a point about climate change, and write in a voice like the following example.”

Experiment with adding follow-up instructions until you get the results you want—but be aware that the next time you start a new chat session, ChatGPT will be learning your preferences from scratch. (Which is why it’s often more useful to resume a previous chat session by finding it in the session history ChatGPT displays in a sidebar.)

Treat AI like a nonjudgmental colleague

Sometimes I have a grab bag of ideas I can’t quite mash into a coherent article, or a charming turn of phrase I can’t bear to give up—or figure out how to use. So now I treat ChatGPT as a kind of creative sounding board: I’ll take a half-baked set of ideas and notes, and an unsuccessful or partial draft of an article or proposal, and say, “Rewrite this draft, incorporating the following ideas.” (You can also paste draft text into ChatGPT and ask it to correct or improve your writing.)

Seeing a draft instantly lets me think about what does or doesn’t work, and allows me to fine-tune and iterate multiple drafts over the course of minutes instead of days. It is like having a nonjudgmental colleague accelerate my writing process.

Get a reality check

You can also ask an AI colleague to let you know if you should give up on something. I recently spent the better part of an evening searching the web for some data that I just couldn’t find anywhere. Finally, it occurred to me to ask my Bing AI if it could find what I was looking for. After I asked for the data a few different ways, it told me that the data just didn’t exist. That saved me a lot of wasted time.

Be skeptical

I recently asked ChatGPT to create a spreadsheet for me with three columns of financial data. Within seconds, it spat out a perfectly formatted set of columns ready for me to copy into a spreadsheet for analysis. Just as I was about to hit copy-paste, though, it occurred to me to cross-check the financial figures. Sure enough, the numbers were completely invented: Because (unlike Bing Chat) ChatGPT wasn’t hooked up to a live internet feed, it didn’t actually have access to the data I wanted, so it just injected some random numbers instead.

Know when you need a human

To recognize the stages of work where your AI colleagues can be helpful, you also need to know when it is time for you to take over, or pass the baton to a human colleague. For all that AI helps me get my stories off the ground, it still can’t get me through the last mile like a human editor or my own eyes. I gave GPT-4 a half-dozen chances to edit my 1,727-word first draft of this article down to something like my 1,100-word assignment, but it just couldn’t get the feel for which elements were essential—or for what we could live without.

Australia’s wealthiest donors are becoming more strategic, more ambitious and increasingly focused on creating measurable impact, according to Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation chief executive Kristina Keneally.

Speaking after the 2026 Gold Dinner, held last week in Sydney, Keneally said Australia was experiencing a significant shift in how major philanthropy is viewed, with large-scale giving increasingly part of conversations about leadership, legacy and social impact.

The annual Gold Dinner, now in its 29th year, brought together some of the country’s most influential business leaders, philanthropists and cultural figures, raising $75.5 million and counting in support of the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network.

While the event has become one of Australia’s most prestigious fundraising gatherings, Keneally said its significance extends far beyond a single evening.

“Gold Dinner, the flagship event of Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation, represents far more than a single evening. It is a powerful demonstration of what a committed community can achieve together over 12 months,” she said.

“The strength of that community, and the trust built over nearly three decades, means people return not just for the event, but for the impact they know it delivers.”

A NEW ERA OF PHILANTHROPY

Large-scale philanthropy has long been a feature of American society, where charitable foundations and major donors often play a prominent role in funding medical research, education and social programs.

Keneally believes Australia is moving in a similar direction.

“Australia is building a stronger culture of large-scale philanthropy, but it is still evolving compared to the United States, where giving at scale is more deeply embedded and widely recognised,” she said.

She said the country’s philanthropic landscape was becoming more sophisticated as successful business leaders increasingly sought opportunities to create meaningful change through their giving.

“In Australia, while generosity has always been strong, large-scale giving has historically been less visible, but that is changing rapidly as more leaders embrace philanthropy as a powerful way to drive meaningful outcomes.”

According to Keneally, events such as the Gold Dinner are helping reshape public perceptions of philanthropy by demonstrating the tangible outcomes that major donations can achieve.

“Gold Dinner is helping to reshape how philanthropy is perceived in Australia, making it more visible, more aspirational and more connected to real-world outcomes,” she said.

WHERE THE MONEY GOES

The funds raised through Gold Dinner support clinical care, research and innovation across the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network.

Over the past 12 months, more than $75.5 million has been raised to help fund advanced medical equipment, innovative care models and world-leading medical research. Areas of focus include precision medicine and early diagnosis, where emerging technologies are already changing how childhood illnesses are detected and treated.

Keneally said the impact is felt directly by children and families facing some of the most difficult moments of their lives.

“For children and families, this translates into very real and immediate impact. It means faster diagnoses, earlier access to life-saving treatments, and care that is more personalised and effective,” she said.

“It also ensures hospitals are equipped not just to respond to illness, but to reimagine what care can look like, giving children the best possible chance not only to survive, but to live full, healthy lives.”

BUSINESS LEADERS BACKING CHANGE

One of the defining characteristics of Gold Dinner is the calibre of its supporters.

The event has evolved into a meeting point for influential leaders from business, culture and philanthropy, many of whom see charitable giving as an extension of their professional and personal legacy.

“It speaks to a community that is not only generous, but increasingly ambitious in how it gives, combining influence, expertise and purpose to achieve outcomes at scale,” Keneally said.

Among the major supporters of this year’s event were Presenting Partner, John-Paul Nassif Foundation; Major Partners, ABC Bullion, Shaw and Partners Financial Services and One Circular Quay by Lendlease; and Premier Partner, Range Rover, whose ongoing support reflects a shared philosophy of legacy and long-term impact.

The evening also featured performances, premium hospitality experiences and fundraising initiatives designed to encourage further support for children’s health services and research.

LOOKING BEYOND NEW HOSPITALS

With major new children’s hospital developments at Randwick and Westmead progressing, Keneally said the focus is increasingly turning towards what comes next.

“The long-term vision is to ensure every child has access to world-leading healthcare, care that continues to evolve through innovation, research and global collaboration,” she said.

The foundation’s future priorities include accelerating medical discovery, expanding access to cutting-edge treatments and helping position New South Wales as a global leader in children’s health.

Keneally said the Gold Dinner remains central to achieving those ambitions because it does more than raise money.

“Gold Dinner is critical to making that vision possible. It not only provides significant funding, but also unites a powerful network of supporters who are driving the future of philanthropy in Australia,” she said.

As Australia’s culture of philanthropy continues to mature, Keneally believes that the network will play an increasingly important role in shaping the future of healthcare for generations to come.

“The result is a community that is helping to shape the future of paediatric care, not just for today’s patients, but for generations to come.”