[AKN # 120] You’re Going To Love Working With Your New AI Assistant
LAUGH: Look At This Photograph, LOVE: The Best Christmas Song
Sup homies?
I want to start today’s edition with a PSA.
Get your flu shot.
First of all, flu is bad this year. Like historically bad and starting earlier than usual (it is the red line).
Secondly, it’s hospitalizing old people AND children. Which is brutal.
Third, the shot is effective. According to the reporting out of the Southern Hemisphere (who just concluded their flu season), the flu vaccine is doing well against the dominant strain in circulation. For example. Chile found a 49% efficacy rate.
So do the right thing and get your flu shot this year, you selfish prick.
Sorry. I recently got my shot and one of the side effects is feeling like I am better than you.
It was odd being back in the office getting the flu shot. Like I haven’t gotten one the past couple years. Just fell out of the habit.
And honestly I was just out of practice.
Like I got there and they put me in this enormous chair.
So I was like “haha is this THE flu shot chair? Why is it so big? You got like Andre the Giant coming in here? My feet don’t even touch the ground.”
And the sweet female nurse paused for a moment and then politely explained how “this is a very standard gynecologist chair.”
Ended up leaving that appointment protected from the flu, but still very susceptible to sounding like an idiot.
On to the newsletter!
LIVE: You’re Going To Love Working With Your New AI Assistant
Ok so listen. I don’t want to be this guy. I really don’t.
But AI is about to change everything about how you do your job.
Yes. You.
As the article below discusses, one version of AI is going to be “autocomplete for everything.”
Whether you are a writer:
Noah imagines that at some point, his workflow will look like this: First, he’ll think about what he wants to say, and type out a list of bullet points. His AI word processor will then turn each of these bullet points into a sentence or paragraph, written in a facsimile of Noah’s traditional writing style. Noah will then go back and edit what the AI wrote – altering phrasing, adding sentences or phrases or links where appropriate, and so on. An iterative, collaborative writing loop where an AI coauthor masters different parts of the cognitive stack than Noah himself, not dissimilar to the co-writing of this article.
A designer:
Industrial design will work in a similar way. Take a look at any mundane, boring object in the room around you – a lamp, or a TV stand, or a coffee maker. Some human being had to come up with the design for that. With generative AI, the designer won’t have to look through pages and pages of examples to riff off of. They’ll just deliver a prompt – “55-inch TV stand with two cabinets” – and see a menu of alternative designs. They’ll pick one of the designs, refine it, and add any other touches they want.
Or pretty much any other field:
Lawyers will probably write legal briefs this way, and administrative assistants will use this technique to draft memos and emails. Marketers will have an idea for a campaign, generate copy en masse and provide finishing touches. Consultants will generate whole powerpoint decks with coherent narratives based on a short vision and then provide the details. Financial analysts will ask for a type of financial model and have an Excel template with data sources autofilled.
Everyone is about to get an army of bots who will do a lot of grunt work for you.
Yes. It is going to make mistakes, but don’t you proofread or fact check your friends? Why would this be any different?
Seriously. You need to try this.
If you want to check it out, go to OpenAI and sign up for a ChatGPT account.
I guarantee that within 20 min of playing with it, you will come to agree that this is about to make work MUCH better.
Like look how easy it is for me to get work done now:
That is what productivity gains look like, people.
LAUGH: Look At This Photograph
LOVE: The Best Christmas Song
I’ve been getting into the Christmas mood recently so I thought it would be helpful to weigh in on the question “what is the best Christmas song?”
The answer is Dominic The Donkey (The Italian Christmas Donkey).
You can hear this holiday classic and so much more here at my Spotify Christmas playlist.
CLOSING TIME
A call to action to help me build a community of homies
You don’t have to go home, but you can subscribe here:
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are strictly my own. Who else’s would they be?
Seriously get your flu shot, asshole,
K.Rapp