LENS: AI. Again. Still.
THE EXPERIENCE A fortnightly newsletter of groovy things
"By far, the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it."
- Eliezer Yudkowsky
Issue 008 – AI. Again. Still.
Greetings and salutations, from, wait, where am I?
Excuse the confusion, but I am in the middle of a five-week travel extravaganza. So far, I’ve been to Cleveland, OH (so great to meet up with so many Experience Advisors at CEX) and Washington, D.C., next up are Dallas, TX; Chicago, IL: Sundance, UT; and the topper Baltimore, MD. I know you’re all jealous that I get to hit all the glamorous and highfaluting hotbeds of fun. I travel like Ryan Bingham (George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air), but with two X chromosomes and without the firing or home wrecking. I have an air travel routine and can navigate almost any airport in any country without missing a beat. What has been different on these most recent, and I suspect upcoming, trips that has me leaning in to listen and maybe skip my habitual pre-boarding tea, is that so many people are talking about AI. Rarely, with the exception of maybe the month leading up to and immediately after a US election or major world (typically tragic) event, have I found that everyone is talking about the same thing. AI has changed that.
As expected, at CEX, with its technologically plugged-in and embracing audience, of course, they are talking about #allthings #AI. From sessions by the incomparable Ann Handley talking about how to write like a robot can’t and finding your writing voice in an ai world to Brian Fanzo’s take on the AI and ChatGPT revolution and how creators need to handle it. But people weren’t just talking about AI in the creator economy, I overheard conversations about AI-powered burger-flipping machines to gardening tools, and even pet grooming.
But most of all, I heard people worried about how artificial intelligence-powered apps, tools, and systems were coming for their jobs. There are so many ways to unpack this fear. A big question that comes to mind is – do you really think that little of your knowledge, expertise, and experience can be that easily replaced by a non-sentient machine? But I’ll leave that for you to cover with your therapist and/or a friend over a pint or three.
Something that we are talking about and reinforcing with our TCA clients when this fear comes up (and which I write about in my most recent blog post) is that we have to keep in mind that the generative AI tools whether they be for writing (Jasper, Writer, GoCharlie), visuals (Adobe’s Firefly, GPT-3), support (Typewise, Cresta, Kaizan), or other uses, what they do is not original thinking. Anything they produce is just iterations of what you, or me, or one of our other amazing marketing and content compatriots have created.
So, until HAL or Ultron are a reality and working collaboratively in a marketing department somewhere, our job is to learn how to leverage these tools to work smarter, giving us more time for creative innovation – something AI can’t do.
And while we’re at it, there are a lot of weird and interesting AI being used.
Talking with the dead, and our dogs
It is a common dinner party question – “If you could have a conversation with anyone in history, who would you choose?". Until recently, that has been a purely hypothetical inquiry. Historical Figures Chat is an app that lets you have (rather contrived) text conversations with more than 20,000 prominent figures from throughout human history. You want to chat with Amelia Earhart about her fateful flight. Or kubutz with Benjamin Franklin about his kite and key experiment. (Note: app is only available in the US).
If you’d like to talk to your favorite yet dearly departed Aunt Maeve, well, Los Angeles-based StoryFile lets people create videos that can reply to viewers’ questions by using artificial intelligence (AI) to play relevant video clips as responses. Initially conceived as a way to preserve stories of Holocaust survivors and talk to other historical figures, StoryFile’s videos are now showing up at funerals so people can talk with their recently passed loved ones. StoryFile’s own CEO used the tech at his mother’s funeral. And for some reason, I don’t find it surprising that William Shatner is their spokesperson.
There isn’t an app to talk to your childhood four-legged friend, yet, but a South Korean company, Petpuls, produces an AI-powered dog collar that analyses their barks to measure their emotional state. Now you’ll know for sure why Sparky chewed up your favorite shoe.
A few interesting ChatGPT tidbits
Of all the generative AI tools, and there are new ones popping up every day it seems, ChatGPT is the belle of the ball or supreme evil master, depending on your perspective, that everyone is talking about. So here are a couple of facts and some support that might help you in your next interaction.
The for-profit OpenAI LP company that makes ChatGPT is a subsidiary of the non-profit company OpenAI Incorporated.
Microsoft is the biggest investor in OpenAI, and it plans to throw another $10 billion at it, giving it a 49% stake in the company. When that happens, only 2% of the company will be owned by its nonprofit parent company.
The GPT of ChatGPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer.
ChatGPT, and similar tools, use human programming to harvest human-made content, which is then vetted and prioritized by humans. It, therefore, contains human errors, human biases, and human conclusions.
Getting the most out of generative AI relies heavily on the prompt, so here’s a cheat sheet to help improve your prompting prowess.
If you're not in the Discord, you might've missed what's Going On With Experience Advisors
Check out Uncharted Journeys, a podcast featuring career journeys, (mis)adventures, and lessons learned along the way from amazing women across industries. From our world of experiences, there are episodes from the likes of Melanie Deziel (Story Fuel CEO and Compelling Storyteller), Jessica Bergman (Salesforce Content Lead), and Neha Sampat (Contentstack CEO and serial entrepreneur) just to name a few. A great listen for compelling stories and some great advice on success, life, and #allthethings.
EA's own Bulldog Pete publishes a great twice-monthly newsletter that helps sales executives and content creators build "frictionless" messaging. The latest edition: Frictionless #2: The Value of RFPs, Nic Cage, and Hiding the Secret Sauce has some wonderful insights.
And last but not least, our next EA Navigation session will be on Robert Rose's talk at CEX - Differentiating Yourself in a Sea Of Sameness. Robert will talk about TCA's "POV Architecture" and how we recommend that you might create one for your business - or for your clients. And as usual, we'll have a fire starter or two to drop some knowledge bombs! Hope you can join us May 26 @ 8 am PT/11 am ET.
If you're just lurking and getting this email get in on that Discord... Need a new invite - just reply to this email.