- Writing Inc
- Posts
- Five hard truths about AI.
Welcome. It’s Sunday night, and I’ve got two cats on my desk. They’re taking up most of my workspace. It’s what you sign up for.
But...more importantly, I’m ready to tell you about the hottest topic on planet earth: AI.
In today’s email:
We’ll tackle some hard truths about AI. You’ll need to know them.
We’ll also cover the most popular AI tool, ChatGPT. If you haven’t heard about it, congratulations. Your life is about to change.
Some AI news from Google and Zendesk
A funny TikTok. It’s funny, I promise.
Deep dive
Now…five hard truths about AI.
There are a lot of AI doomers out there.
They’ll be telling you you’ll lose your job to AI. That it’s too late. That you’re behind the curve, and the wave of automation is coming.
Don’t listen to them.
Here are some truths.
Chances are, AI is going to change your job. Sorry ‘bout it.
If you don’t learn to work with AI tools, you’re probably not prepared for the future.
Some jobs will largely disappear to AI.
There’s a right way and a wrong way to use AI tools.
Relax.
Accept you’ll have to adapt. The way you do your job today won’t be the same. Understand you’re preparing yourself for the future.
But…what can you do?
1/ Use AI to augment your weaknesses
Sometimes, I get a terrible case of writer’s block.
It’s impossible for me to start writing anything.
To fix that, I’ve started using ChatGPT as my personal writing assistant.
Here’s an example prompt.
"I'm writing an article about the best ways to learn how to make your own pizza. I want to talk about the best ways to make dough, how to shape it once it's ready, and how to get the right toppings. My audience is complete beginners to pizza making. What else am I missing that would be useful for someone to know?”
ChatGPT is scary good at understanding context and intent. Use that to your advantage.
2/ Use AI to learn quicker
Pro tip: If you’re googling something, you shouldn’t be.
Try your absolute hardest to ask an AI your question first. That’s step 1.
The next step is using ChatGPT’s vast knowledge to learn things faster.
Like so.
“I want to learn about x. Use the 80-20 rule, which says that 80% of the consequences comes from 20% of causes, to develop a learning plan for me.”
“Can you summarize this text to its most important points?”
“Can you explain this topic to me like I’m 5?”
“Can you show me how you approached this answer, step by step?”
“I want you to act as a Socrat and use the Socratic method to help me improve my critical thinking, logic and reasoning skills. Your task is to ask open-ended questions to the statement I make and after I provide a response, give me constructive feedback to each response before you ask the next question.”
3/ Work on your soft skills
There are some things AI won’t touch for a long time.
GPT-4 is OpenAI’s most advanced model. It kicks butt. But it sucks at two things.
Software engineering interviews, and the AP English Language exam.
What does that mean for you?
It sucks at creative writing, and critical thinking.
Use your human creativity to your advantage. Sure, generative AI will write emails for you.
They’ll all sound the same.
Your uniqueness is your strength.
4/ Embrace AI tooling. Don’t be afraid of it.
If you take one thing away from today’s issue, let it be this.
AI tools aren’t going away. Learning to interact with an AI is a skill most people will have.
Want to get ahead? Be one of the first to get good at it.
5/ AI isn’t perfect.
AI doesn’t know what’s right and what’s wrong. It just matches what it gets with what goes out.
AI can get stuff wrong.
Here’s an example.
I’m going to Corpus Christi in a few weeks with my girlfriend, Fiona, and my dog, Macaroni. We wanted to find dog-friendly hotels.
Knowing ChatGPT is pretty darn good at travel planning, I asked it for dog-friend hotels in the area.
Of the five hotels it spat back, two didn’t exist. At all. It just made them up.
Not a great success rate.
We can't lean on AI just yet. So don't accept it as our overlords.
AI news that should interest you
Source: Zendesk
1/ Zendesk is using AI to improve tech support, not replace it
Worried about AI taking your job? Pump the brakes a little.
At least, that’s what Zendesk says. They’re one of the world’s largest customer support platforms.
Their message? “Automation isn’t meant to replace humans, it’s meant to make their job easier.”
What they mean: It's not taking 100% of our job; just the most tedious parts.
AI can knock out the easy tickets and let the support team focus on critical issues. AI can also figure out just how seething with rage a customer is…before that customer yells at a real human.
Zoom out. Are you paying attention?
This is what you’ll be doing at your job.
AI won’t replace you. You’ll replace boring tasks with AI.
Source: Google
2/ Google has AI for…every Google product you use
If you use Google products (so…probably most of you) then big news.
You'll be happy to know they announced that, in the next 3-18 months, you’ll get some cool new AI features.
Practically around the corner!
Google Search, for example, will act more like a useful search engine, which is what it used to be. Above the search results, and the ads, will be an AI-generated summary of the results.
Pretty cool, right? Goes directly against Google’s entire business model, but whatever.
You can also use AI to write an email, job posting, or…homework assignment…using generative AI. But you didn’t hear that from us.
The point? If you’re not sure about AI tools, using them in apps like Docs or Gmail will be the easiest way to learn more about them.
Quick links
1/ There’s…a lot of money going into AI startups. Link
2/ Like it or not, AI hangs over the Hollywood writer’s strike. Link
3/ An AI-powered vacation planner. Link
4/ Our Twitter. You should follow it. Link
5/ A deep dive on getting an AI to do what you want it to do. Link
This TikTok isn’t wrong.
Every fundraising pitch right now
— Matt Turck (@mattturck)
8:44 PM • May 10, 2023
Once again…AI isn’t perfect.
From Reddit