AI#02 - Exploring The Benefits of AI From Home To Work
Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing our daily lives and workplaces, often in ways we don't immediately realize. In this article, we'll delve into the practical applications of AI.
The other day, my wife and I met with an old friend. He is a pilot and flies internationally between Barcelona and the Americas. He had a two day stay in San Francisco, so we used this opportunity to reunite after seven years. We treated him to a few drinks at the Marriott rooftop bar with a gorgeous view of the city and took him to Fago de Pago for a unique Brazilian BBQ experience.
Our friend is a hardcore Depeche Mode fan; he has followed them to countless concerts over the last twenty five years. He can go to three concerts in a week. He takes pictures and videos of every concert that he turns into short films. He is very imaginative too, and he will dress up as a made-up superhero.
As we sipped a cocktail at The View Lounge, he was telling us about his latest video creation. He came up with a new plot and created a trailer to promote his film. And then it hit me. He was probably using tools like Supercreator.ai or Tavus for his video creation and editing; Stockimg.ai or Midjourney for image creation; ChatGPT or Japser for his movie script; and Soundful for the audio track. So I asked him, "Do you use AI for your movie and trailer production?" I was all ears.
He went silent. It was as if I had asked the question in French, a language unknown to him. I quickly proceeded to start telling him all the cool things AI could do for him. I lost him. We looked at each other, laughed, and went back to our grown-up discussions.
If you listen to the pundits, AI and ChatGPT promise to change our lives in unimaginable ways. People and businesses who do not adopt it will be left behind. Yet, for most people, AI is just another technological innovation, a futuristic concept with little implication in their daily lives.
The discussion with my friend was a welcome reminder that not everyone lives and breathes AI. It also woke me up to the fact that there is a huge difference between hearing about AI in the news and changing the way we do things in our lives or at work with AI.
With the deluge of new AI tools and promises invading my feeds and inbox, I decided to put AI tools to the sniff test and try to figure out what they could do for me in my personal and professional lives.
AI Applications In Our Daily Life
Home projects: I tried using ChatGPT to learn how to fix a paver on my backyard retaining wall that was moving; despite lengthy answers, I got a good recommendation (use epoxy to glue the paver); however, I did not get recommendations and images or videos on how to do it and what to buy; I recently ran the same prompts with Bing Chat and got better results and links to sites and videos!
Menu planning: I asked ChatGPT to generate healthy menu plans; this did not work so well for me, probably because it did not know about my preferences; it suggested Coq au Vin as a recipe you can make in under 30 minutes... I wish!
Email and messages: It was my wife's birthday in May, and we threw a big party at home. I used ChatGPT to generate the text for the Evite; it did wonders; I was ready in two minutes! I regularly use ChatGPT to optimize my substack's post titles. It does a decent job even though it can get wordy and the sentence structure repetitive; it's just a matter of time until AI for text gets smarter.
Kids education: for me, it's a no-brainer; we have to expose our kids to AI right now. I used it recently with my eleven-year-old to research portfolio construction (I am teaching him about finance and stock investment) and to brainstorm decoration ideas for his mom's birthday. It is promising but will require much more practice time and discussion so he understands the potential and risk of AI.
Higher Education: We all want our kids to receive a great education at a fair price, but how do you find such a gem? High school advisors are more focused on the output (applications, filing for grants, etc.) than the outcome. Online education being a topic of interest, I know a few things about the American school system, e.g., it takes more than six years to graduate from a 4-year program, only 25% of graduates find a job in their field. I told ChatGPT and Bing that I was a high-schooler seeking a high-quality and affordable Computer Science program. ChatGPT did an ok job, but Bing Chat killed it! Not only did it found the top 5 programs across the US with tuition prices, but it also told me the expected starting salary. Total research time: two minutes.
Budgeting, payments, and more: I could not find an AI assistant that would help me with budgeting similar to Mint.com, scheduling and making automatic payments, or doing some basic accounting. My recent reading suggests that ChatGPT plugins and Chrome extensions will help; Zapier may act as the glue to automate personal and family tasks. I will put it to the test.
Finance and Investing: Many people in the US invest in stock (401K, IRA, brokerage account). Can AI help you become a better investor? It depends. If you want to learn about investment styles, risk management, portfolio construction, and other topics, then yes. If you seek an investor copilot as a way to get better returns, I would say no. The reason is simple: market and price discovery are transparent (in theory), and as such, no AI tool can get better at buying stock than someone else since they all share the same information. AI may help professionals, but right now I would not bet a single penny on AI-driven investments.
Health: other than researching information, I did not find any practical applications yet. AI has huge implications for the future of personal health and healthcare, which we will discuss in later posts.
Travel & Entertainment: AI tools can do an outstanding job at planning the optimal trip and making sure you have a great experience. I wish I had thought of ChatGPT last year; I could have saved hours of research planning a secret three-day trip in Rome for my brother's birthday. Start using ChatGPT plugins (paid versions) such as Kayak and Expedia and become your own travel agent.
My digital behavior is changing fast. I stopped using Google Search and now run all my research through ChatPGT or Bing Chat. AI plugins and extensions may soon replace my favorite consumer sites. I can see a future (next month?) where I automate 80% of my repetitive tasks with ChatGPT and Zapier.
Though I still have more exploration to do, it is obvious that AI offers countless practical applications and benefits. It can free up time, help us learn faster, get more productive, and make better decisions. It is a bit like a drug addiction; once you get started, you cannot stop using it.
AI In The Workplace: A Productivity Booster
I see huge opportunities for using AI in our daily jobs. Like anything else, the real challenge may simply be to get started and be okay with trial and error. There are many AI tools out there that claim the world but deliver limited benefits. Don't get discouraged after your first try!
I try to come up with a list of activities that I perform regularly or that take too much of my precious time. The expectation is that AI can drastically reduce the time it takes to perform the task. I find a 50% productivity boost to be the minimum, and 2x to 5x a good target.
Presentation: tools like Presentations and Sendsteps help you create a slide deck based on text input; it can be a huge time saver. I have yet to find AI generators that can reuse a corporate template.
Market research: AI tools like Bing Chat can access the latest information online and produce amazing research results in record time.
Specs and Proposals: AI can be helpful to help you generate specs, personas, user stories, acceptance criteria, etc. I recently optimized a draft business proposal using ChatGPT to rewrite it using the Minto Pyramid framework and improved the writing style with QuillBot.
GTM plans: AI can generate a good baseline for a go-to-market plan with Objectives and Key Results (OKR).
Blogs: It can be a real time saver to use AI to generate blog copies to present a feature or write about best practices.
Marketing: the applications are countless for marketers, e.g., write a product promotion, create a promotional event, draft a landing page, or generate a free guide to download for demand generation.
Email: Many email tools include an AI writer assistant or let you add an extension; this is a great time saver that allows you to focus on more productive tasks.
Hiring: Next time you have a job opening, use ChatGPT to create the job description and build an ideal candidate profile.
Excel: If you crunch numbers, you can try Excel AI assistants to create formulas and spreadsheets with advanced logic with ease.
Meeting notes: several AI assistants, like Otter.ai capture conversations during your meetings and organize them into notes.
Coaching: leverage AI for special situations where you may need assistance and guidance on how to proceed; this post contains 60+ situational prompts to help Developers, Product Managers, and Scrum Masters with their daily jobs.
I am still in the early stages of my exploration. I am finding everyday new use cases for AI, e.g., embed ChatGPT in Slack and get AI conversations in team channels; use Zappier in ChatGPT to automate tasks (handy to manage to-dos, add events to the calendar, read notes, etc.). The sky really seems to be the limit!
Learning About AI is a Must
As a product manager and, in general, a white collar worker, you have a choice to make:
Option 1: Treat AI news as noise and keep going with your life.
Option 2: Learn and train yourself on AI and get ready for the AI revolution.
I am obviously in the option 2 camp, and I urge you to do the same. I have to warn you, though: it will take more than reading a book or a few blog articles. The biggest challenge is to change your habits and turn on the "AI learning" mode. If you need help forming habits, read Atomic Habits from James Clear and Deep Work from Cal Newton.
My recommendation is to practice AI once a week at least, preferably daily. Since this is a new habit to develop, you may want to use some hacks, like having a daily task of fifteen minutes in your calendar dedicated to AI practice. Alternatively, you can identify a weekly AI project and set a specific goal. Apply your learning to something that is relevant to you at this moment so you can extract value and enjoyment out of it (and a bit of dopamine). Generating my wife's birthday party invitation in less than two minutes gave me the chills!
I also encourage you to pay to learn faster. For instance, the ChatGPT plugins require a monthly ChatGPT subscriber ($20/month). It is worth every single penny as you unlock magic plugins such as Zapier and EdX. You may also consider buying AI books that you find interesting. Treat this discovery and learning phase as a personal investment, and be ready to spend a few hundred dollars if needed. It is also a good idea to try and compare similar AI apps. For instance, I used to find Bing Chat better than ChatGPT when I was on GPT3.
Remember, the quality of the answers you get will depend heavily on the quality of your questions, i.e., prompts. Spend time learning about prompts, what works and what does not, and finding prompt templates that deliver outstanding results. It is not a bad idea to keep your favorite prompts handy. PrompPerfect does a fantastic job optimizing your prompts.
Here are a few helpful resources to boost your productivity with AI extensions and plugins:
For prompting, I recommend the following resources:
Everyone is writing about AI, LLMs, AGI, and Deep Learning these days. It's hard to pick a top blog or newsletter. I personally like Tom Alder's recommendation, the A16z AI canon reading list, and Product Growth from Aakash Gupta.
Conclusion
This concludes the second article of my AI series (the first one is here). I hope you find it useful. If you know of great AI resources or use AI tools to boost your productivity, please share them with me and the community.
In my next article, I will share my thoughts on how AI will impact society and our lives in the near future.