Artificial Intelligence and Problem Solving: Google's Most Asked AI Questions Answered for IT Directors
Artificial intelligence and problem solving are at the top of every IT director’s mind right now — and the questions showing up on Google prove it. In this episode of the IT Directors Podcast, Jay Bradford from Clear Winds Technology answers the most searched AI questions directly, cutting through the noise to give IT directors and business leaders the practical, real-world answers they actually need. From protecting customer data to deciding which AI tools are worth the investment, this episode delivers straightforward guidance on how to approach artificial intelligence and problem solving in your organization today.
How Does AI Improve Over Time?
Hey, what’s going on? This is Jay here with the IT Directors Podcast, powered by Clear Winds. Today, we’re going to find out what Google has to say about an amazing topic — AI — and you, the IT directors, have been asking these questions. So let’s see what Google has to say.
The first question is: how does AI improve over time? Great question, and I’m glad you asked, because AI over time learns your behavior. It predicts what you’re going to do. It gathers data from a lot of different sources. So over time, AI is always developing, always learning, and always getting better, and it’s using multiple data sources to do that.
How Does a Business Protect Customer Data When Implementing AI Tools?
Great question. Glad you asked. Hey, if you’re an IT director at the enterprise level, let’s go get Claude, let’s go get OpenAI — let’s get enterprise licensing for that so your data is protected in your company portal. Because look, every time you use ChatGPT, every time you use Claude, every time you use Grok, all these tools go out to the web and they’re putting your data out there — and that’s how you get all these great resources back. But if you have an enterprise version, you can isolate your data to your own internal portal. So that’s one way.
Also, we have to have security in place. You have to have guardrails up. You have to have tools in place, and you have to do training for your employees, because we don’t want to use AI tools to generate tax documents or financial documents. We can manipulate financial data and generate reports, but there are some guardrails that have to be in place. So hey, great question. Glad you asked. Let’s go to the next one.
How Does a Business Decide Which AI Tools Are Actually Worth the Investment?
That’s a phenomenal question, and I know a lot of you IT directors and business leaders out there are thinking the same thing, because people are walking around with all these AI tools on their phones right now and they can do multiple things. So how does a business decide which tools are actually worth investing in?
Whatever you can automate, whatever you can help speed up for a business, whatever you can help with imports and exports, and whatever can make your employees more proficient and save time on menial tasks — those are the tools you need to use. There are so many tools out there that will help with automation and with tasks your staff is doing that sometimes just take up menial time, pulling them away from their main job function. So AI tools can be super powerful in that realm, but you have to be careful because not all of them are equal.
There are a lot of tools out there, so research which tool fits which need. For instance, Gemini might be a great tool for image creation. Claude might be better for documentation, developing SOPs, SOWs, and contracts. And OpenAI is kind of like the Swiss Army knife.
For instance, I’ve used Claude daily in my role as a sales engineer here at Clear Winds Technology. I use it to generate quotes and SOWs, so it is a powerful tool for document creation. You can upload your internal documents, tell it what to use, isolate it to your own data, and then generate documentation from those data sets. I use OpenAI to develop workflows and go out and grab different data sources. So those are just examples of some different tools you can use.
What Is Artificial Intelligence, and How Is It Different from Regular Software?
Man, what a great question. What is artificial intelligence, and how is it different from regular software? I’m glad you asked, because here on the IT Directors Podcast, we have all the answers. No, just kidding — we really don’t. But hey, that’s why we have the Google boards.
Artificial intelligence learns, adapts, and understands your behavior over time. It uses multiple data sources to gather that data, and it keeps growing. As you feed it data, it learns your behavior. Regular software, on the other hand, is more like an if-then program — it’s very strict and very rigid. If you’re an old-school IT person and you remember Visual Basic or C++, it’s the if-then: if someone does this, then log in to this program. That’s regular software. Hope that one helped. Let’s see what the next question is.
What Are the Legal and Compliance Risks of AI?
Phenomenal question. Look, I don’t know if you’ve seen the news, but there was someone who got in a bit of trouble for using AI to generate people’s tax documents and tax returns without even vetting the resources or the data. So there are real legal guardrails and compliance risks around AI.
In healthcare, in law firms, and in government agencies, there are guidelines specifying which AI tools you can use within their software and their environment. So look — check with your compliance officer. Check with your data governance committee. Check with your AI committee, because there are guardrails there, and there are a lot of compliance issues around AI. If you vet them, you’ll be safe.
What Is a Real-World Example of AI Being Used in Business Today?
Hey, I’ll tell you about my own real-world example. Just yesterday, we were doing a walkthrough for a customer for a managed service quote. We did the walkthrough, counted the devices, left the customer’s site, and from the parking deck of their building, I was able to generate a quote on my phone using a tool that we developed internally with Claude. I mean, how much more speed of business can you get? That is where AI has helped businesses so much. You can take tasks that used to take hours and now do them from the power of your cell phone, which is incredible. It blows my mind. Being an IT director for over twenty-five years, I almost get excited like a kid at Christmas when I start using these AI tools because I see the hours that it saves.
Another real-world example: using multiple data sources to do data mining across multiple spreadsheets. Where you used to have to build formulas and macros, now you just upload them into Claude, OpenAI, Groq, Base44 — all these tools. They’ll do the data manipulation and spit out a result for you. Hey, it might be web-based, but it’ll do the data manipulation for you.
What Is the Biggest Misconception People Have About AI?
You know, one of the things I hear the most is: is AI going to take my job? Is AI going to rule the world? Look, AI has been around for probably thirty years. You’ve been using it with Alexa, with Siri, and with all these things for years — you just really didn’t realize it until now. AI is kind of like the new term that “cloud” was five or ten years ago.
But the biggest misconception is that AI is going to eliminate thousands of jobs. You know, some jobs could be eliminated with AI, but really, people who know how to use AI tools are going to see their performance enhanced and their value elevated within their organization. So learning those tools is going to make your job easier, better, and more efficient. And who knows what we’ll have in ten years in the healthcare industry and in the world of invention because AI tools are freeing up people’s minds to think bigger and imagine bigger things. So I kind of approach AI from that angle — I look at the positives of what it can do in production.
So hey, thank you for asking, and I’m glad you asked these questions today. This is Jay with the IT Directors Podcast, powered by Clear Winds, and we’re always here to provide answers to your Google questions. Have a great day.
Artificial Intelligence and Problem Solving Starts With Asking the Right Questions
The most searched AI questions on Google all point to the same underlying challenge: IT directors and business leaders know AI is transforming the way organizations operate, but they need practical, trustworthy guidance on how to implement it safely and effectively. As Jay breaks down in this episode, artificial intelligence and problem solving go together when you invest in the right tools, put security guardrails in place, train your team, and shift your mindset from fear to strategy. AI is not here to replace smart people — it is here to make smart people more powerful. Subscribe to the IT Directors Podcast on Spotify, LinkedIn, and Instagram, and visit clearwinds.net for show notes, resources, and more answers to your biggest AI questions.
