Mastering Ai : How to Work with Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is having a breakout year, but many people I know, and maybe even you still aren't using it.

 

UBS predicts the AI industry's revenue will grow at a ~72% CAGR from $83B in 2024 to $420B in 2027 (source).  In this post I explore this fast emerging trend of artificial intelligence, sharing how I'm working with it, some of the tools I'm using, and ways you can take your work and life to the next level with this technology as well.  The full post is below and also available to listen on my podcast.

 

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Working with Ai

 

Okay, let's drop into the topic of artificial intelligence, of AI. I'm buzzing on this topic, I've been buzzing on it for a while, and I've been following it for a while. This year has been a major breakout year for the space, for the artificial intelligence industry and topic, because things have started to break through.

 

ChatGPT broke things wide open with one of their recent releases that just really kind of blew people away and it blows me away and it's amazing. And then from that, there's just been like a flow of development on top of that tech, around that tech, and then also with competing tech, right? So what is this stuff? Let's just kind of like simplify it a bit. And I'm not a tech guy. I mean, I'm a tech guy, but I'm not like a programmer. I'm not a coder, right? I don't write code for this stuff. And, you know, it can get a bit heady in the details about how all this stuff works.

But part of what I feel I generally do well is simplifying complex things for people generally, no matter what we're talking about, is kind of netting it down so that if you haven't started playing with this yet, and you haven't started exploring it in the way you can use it for whatever it is you do, that this episode as an example will help you do that. It will help you dip your toes into this, into this water, into this ocean of potential. And so basically, what you have here is like language learning models, LLMs, I believe that's the acronym. And it's basically an engineered kind of code set that learns and pulls information quickly and synthesizes it quickly, and then outputs answers based on what it's learned.

 

Generally speaking, that's the way I understand it, right? If you have a more advanced interpretation of that, then by all means, drop your comments or send me a note or whatever. However, this is my interpretation, generally high level of like how this stuff works, right? Without losing brain cells and melting my brain trying to figure out the heavy tech on it. So that's kind of like what's under the hood.

And these different generations of the tech is evolving in its ability to dig deeper into what it's looking at, to become more creative in its output and its answers, to be able to handle more complex, information, puzzles and similar, and therefore even more complex outputs, right? Depending on whatever you're asking it. And that's the thing.

 

It's called ChatGPT, because it's like a chat box, where when you go to a website now and they have like the little chat window where they say, ask us a question. Well, it operates like that and, those little pop-ups can be powered by humans or they can be automated. Like a lot of sites just connected those things to their knowledge center, right? They're support kind of database.

And then based on what you ask, it directs you to links to answer your question, which I don't always think works, to be honest, on that front, because I'm often asking for pretty specific things and it just depends how expansive that knowledge base has been developed. And I kind of keep going past it looking for support anyways, but that's neither here nor there necessarily. This works really well, like chat GPT as an example and as the example for this AI space, right? But you can think about it as like an elevated tool beyond that type of experience.

 

So what you're doing is you're asking it questions and it will generate answers. And what is mind-blowingly impressive is how broad it is in the questions you can ask and the answers you can get. Like I just said, the limitations of a general chat box on a website is how deep your knowledge base is that it can pull answers from.

In many cases, at least traditionally to date those have been limited, but in this case with this tool and family of AIs we'll say, of AI units, you can get so much information back. And so it's blown my mind and it's blown a lot of people's minds. It's become chat GPT, which is I believe the fastest tool to grow to a hundred million users, the fastest software growth. You know, there's those graphs out there that show you like how fast each platform, took to get to that many users. And I believe chat GPT is the fastest.

And so it just took off. And like I was talking about in my other episode about breakouts and breakthroughs, everything kind of goes and then it starts to percolate and there's kind of a watershed moment and then things go parabolic.  And then they break through, they break out and then like you're a whole new level, of your life, your world, your project, whatever. And there's a different trajectory that you realize in that phase and energy and opportunity and lots of stuff happens.

So that's happened, in 2023 ChatGPT is just like the stuff, in my opinion. I've been using it on all kinds of different levels. I've been experimenting with it in as many different ways as I can, and its just been phenomenal.

So the first question you have to ask yourself is, are you using it? Have you been trying it? If you haven't go to openai.com, just sign up for a free account and go to chat GPT and just start experimenting with it. You can create new conversations and conversation threads. It'll save your conversations so you can come back to them. And then you can just keep asking questions that will be like in that thread of conversation. And you can save each different conversation depending on what they're related to.

Maybe one will be related to like fitness for you or something. Maybe another one's related to like corporate strategy or business strategy or something. Maybe another is related to food, just as an example.

 

So you could have different kind of conversation tabs and you can check back to continue those conversations about a certain topic and keep them going. So it's good organization that way.

And you can just ask questions about literally whatever you want. So things have happened since OpenAi dropped this, I guess that was the 3.5 version? And Microsoft, who's a player again in my opinion, they weren't really feeling like they were like totally in the game.  They weren't really the cool kids for a while. And the whole tech space, in my opinion, Apple really came out with some cool operating systems and tech and all this sort of stuff for a long while, but something's changing over with Microsoft and they made a power move here. You know like basketball players, they made a hard move into the paint to the basket and made a huge investment in chat GPT, and plugged it into their browser Bing.

 

And I don't know if you've ever really used Bing. Most people kind of intuitively use Google by default, but Bing is out there as another search engine. And so they plug GPT into Bing. And so you could have a free Microsoft online account. And when you're logged in, you can go to Bing and you can go to Bing chat. And basically it is powered by chat GPT also.

 

Now, my understanding of this, what's different between the two? Well, if you're on chat GPT proper, you can use GPT 4, which is a bit more advanced in its responses and abilities. And it also has other features of browsing, code interpretation, a whole bunch of different stuff. And they keep adding to that into the paid version.

On GPT 4 you can try it out, kick it around. It also plugs into different apps so you can get output through different apps. Aand there's like a growing ecosystem there, a whole bunch going on so potentially worthy of exploring for you.

 

And on the Bing side, what it is powered by generally is GPT 4, not necessarily with all of those features, but one prominent feature is the ability to search the web. So when you ask it a question, it pulls from the web current up to the present and provides youanswers based on your questions and your requests.

 

Chat GPT 3.5 in comparison is pulling from, I believe, a 2021 data set, which I think is still pretty expansive, depending what you're asking, depending how timely the information is you're seeking.

 

But those are some of the differences and you can use Bing for free, which gives you that web access with a GPT 4 level of processing power, of generative power of, dare I kind of say intellect. It's kind of interesting, the human side of this you've seen in all the movies over the years, like, these considered interactions with artificial intelligence and like, how would we speak to them? How would we treat them? Are they human? Aren't they? What is the, moment of consciousness and things like this.

And I find when I write into these AIs and ask for things, I do still ask, I do still say please and say, thank you. It's just an interesting natural instinct and habit that's developed already in using this, but those are kind of the two big ones related to GPT.

 

And then there's Google Bard which last check was not yet available in Canada, but it's another AI tool that Google's, advancing. (Now Gemini) I've seen some interesting, suggestions of use cases like using Bard to scan your website, your analytics, things like this, and provide, insight and suggestions and similar. So I look forward to Bard being available in Canada so I can kick that around and try things like that.

There's another that people talk about, which is Claude. I haven't really kicked Claude around, but similar type of experience I understand. The people whose brains are way deep into this stuff are comparing it with the other and analyzing them on pretty deep levels.

The differences between the two or between all of them really at the high level, it's about functionality. What can I do with this and not right with each one and then using them kind of accordingly to my wishes.

And so I have been, and I feel you should as well because the power in these tools is exponential. Like I can plug anything in and I can get an answer back here now in like 30 seconds and an impressive answer, a sourced answer, as well as an interpretive answer. Like it's just, what do you want to know? And that's really what it comes down to interacting with this, this interface, with this kind of resource is what do you want to know? What do you want to do? And for each of us, that answer is going to be different.

 

We're working on different things, but what are the puzzles you're trying to figure out right now in your life? What are the puzzles you're trying to figure out in your business, in your work?.. In anything else you're doing, you're planning, your travel ideas, you name it. Honestly, that's, what's just so mind blowing about this. Name it.

So the challenge is to write down what those things are. If you haven't, if you don't, have your notes and your goals and your intentions and stuff, you can use these tools to help you advance those. And they can be in so many different categories, but you start the conversation and say, "Hey, if I wanted to do this, how would I do that?" And it would give you answers and say, "Hey, if this is what you want to do, then this is how you do that."

And then you look at that and ask kind of another related question and you start to just go deeper into the topic until you've fully like fleshed out the answer that you're looking for. Or fully kind of achieve the thing you're trying to achieve. It will totally guide you through all the steps. It will totally provide you all the information you require. Now I think it can do this really, really deep.

 

I think and feel, and I sense that some of the power of this has been throttled back a little bit. I believe there's a bit of a governor on these it feels, cause there was a bunch of chatter about how afraid we should be of AI for a bit. And then that seemed to get pretty quiet. So kind of, why did it get pretty quiet? How did everybody calm down? It's not that it's not present, but like nobody's really saying it kind of as loud over the last little bit, but they definitely did at first.

So I think there's some ways that everybody kind of made the loud voices feel a little more comfortable. So they didn't have to keep banging that drum and those pots and pans about it every day. But there's still just tremendous power to achieve like all kinds of regular people stuff really, and business stuff, and it really comes down to using it. It comes down to what you ask it and how you ask it.

 

So there's been all this energy around like prompts, and people suggesting prompt engineering is a new career. I'm not sure, maybe, but I'm not entirely sure. but a lot people are selling prompt packs and things like this. I mean, maybe that's a thing. We'll see.

 

I haven't bought any prompt packs. For me it's just about exploring and asking questions, but it is important to ask it the right question. If I just show up to use GPT and say, Hey, I'm Joe. Uh, what's up? It's not going to answer you and say, um, Hey Joe, here's your life plan. Here's the thing you need to do to do all the things that you want to achieve and whatever, whatever, whatever, based on that question, right? It's going to give you, I'm going to suggest like a reactionary answer to your input. I feel this is a defining characteristic of this right now.

I'm not sitting in front of GPT or any AI in my experience yet. Where I'm sitting down with the computer and it's sensing that I'm sitting down. It says, Hey Chad, I noticed you were doing this and this and this today. And well, I just wanted to let you know that I feel that if you did this, this and this instead, your results might be this, this and this, right? Is that going to be possible in the future? Yeah. Is that far off? I don't think so. If some of these things can do that already, interesting, but not the tools that I'm using just yet.

 

But I don't think we're quite there. So for the purposes of this right now, and I shouldn't even say that, that we aren't quite right there. I probably just need to plug more of my own stuff in.

Like I said, this app ecosystem is growing. So which apps do I use already that I could plug into this, that it could then generate other insights and outputs. Like I just said, Bard checking out a website and checking out a website's analytics and being able to provide recommendations for optimization, SEO ranking, increasing sales, like all this sort of stuff based on visitor behavior. Well, that's really valuable.

 

If you have a website and you understand, and you've looked at your analytics before. And you've seen how generally complex the analytics can be and how generally complex optimization can be trying to sift through all that data and figure out the patterns and the important information is one thing, the layers of it that it offers, as well as interpreting that right. And transforming that, or at least acting upon that information in an actionable way, we're creating an action plan upon that information.

So if we can get there, it's super valuable to do that thing. And so that's a way that it seems like, it's just not where I'm yet using it. So this is a more an action reaction relationship directly correlated, right? So just like anything else, it's about the questions you ask. It's about the type of input.

 

There's other AI as well that are really popular right now. Midjourney for image generation, Dolly, which is another open AI for image generation, Runway for AI based filmmaking and generating motion video and similar from whatever text input, and more.  They're popping up all over the place, these different types of Ai tools now, but they're all largely dependent on what your input is.

So maybe there is a big prompt career for you helping people in large organizations specifically, because they don't have the time to get into it themselves, but they're like, hey, let's do this thing because it's cost effective generally. And the output is really creative and original and fresh. And we need somebody to sit in that chair and go for it.

So if you're looking for a gig these days, getting yourself reasonably certified ini that kind of stuff I'm sure it could be valuable. Sure. You could market it. You know, becoming an Ai ambassador or a transformation agent for companies to help them leverage these types of tools. Sure. There's a place for that. So there's an idea and it's growing. So there's probably room for lots of people to do that work.

But it matters what you ask and it matters how you ask. And it's a part of you feeling into that for yourself, what your needs are to kind of master the way to ask, but a couple of key things, and not to even just master the way to ask, but really like take inventory of kind of the answers you're looking for. And then the outcomes you're hoping for, right. The results you're seeking with these. So one thing off the top is, is really instructing it.

And at least before this was relevant, but it's moving quickly. So I still feel it matters. But assigning it kind of like a specialty and you can get really specific with this.

But for me, if I'm working in online marketing then I can say, I want to say to it, you're an online marketing expert. So it kind of frames it where its head's at. And you can even get more specific and say, you're an online marketing expert based on XYZs. Book this or XYZs marketing strategies, or even just to say like best practices a bit more generic, if you're not pointing it to a particular philosophy or strategy.

So then you say that and then you say, this is just an example that you say, "I have an online brand and we're looking at coming up with a new ad campaign for this company. This company is XYZ. This is what we do. This is our audience. This is, these are our products, right? That's if you're on chat GPT without browsing. If you're on Bing, which uses GPT with browsing, right? You could just put the website address and go, and here's our company. Here's what we do. And we're coming up with a new, we want to come up with a new slogan or whatever for our campaign.

And then you can say, can you generate 30 new slogan ideas for this campaign? And you could say like maybe your sports company is similar to Nike's just do it or something, (but not the same, obviously), but you know what I mean? Same kind of idea. It just kind of sends the Ai in a more specific direction to dig, right? It gives it some criteria and it'll come back. And I swear, if you haven't done this yet, I look forward to this blowing your mind.

 

It comes back to you with answers in like 30 seconds. It'll say, sure, I'm happy to do that, and here it is. What do you think? Kind of a big deal.

So then it just pumps all this out and you look at it, your mind's blown the first time you try that and you just started to realize how many different and more expansive ways you can use these resources, right? These tools now to answer kind of all these different questions you have and fill in all the blanks these things that you need, right? And just grow and you're doing it that fast. So for like the text-based stuff, like you can create, you can create, you know, business ideas, you can generate business ideas, business names, you know, audience profiling, you could write blog posts, you could create guides, you can just do all kinds of stuff, right? Sky's the limit really.

 

For the image, you know, image-based stuff, they're like text to image. So the key is for those in midjourney is pretty advanced. Like it's coming out with like photorealistic, like cinematic styled imagery that when you see it, if you haven't yet, it blows your mind. Like it is just phenomenal.

Now put that next to a like real image and you can see the subtlety in it that is revealing. I feel to me, at least I can see that just the tightest detail that goes, oh yeah, that's AI, but they're just fabulous images. They're just gorgeous.

And people are having fun creating images based on two totally unrelated concepts, right? Like they'll put something in there and they'll be like, you know, show me an image of a bunch of bunny rabbits in Ironman or something. And that's the type of thing you can take these two totally unrelated concepts and then it generates it. And now what you get is based on how specific you are about what you're asking for.

 

So there are some prompt generation insights that you can get from people who actually really deeply understand photography and the nuance of expert level photography. To then provide those instructions and it reads those and creates output accordingly. And that's really how this stuff is mostly going to work.

Like all of us are involved in different things and different general expertise, right? And so the types of questions you're going to be able to ask at a deep level to get the outputs you want are going to be based on that expertise. And it's okay if you don't have the expertise, you can leverage these tools to go deeper into topics also. But you can also go really deep in topics that you already have advanced, right? Or expert knowledge in and, and go even deeper or just get really valuable outputs kind of at that level of your craft, right? That will help you work more efficiently or, solve puzzles or improve your work at that level and so fast, right? So this is why it's so important to get on it.

And it's early, lots of talk about like will this replace jobs and will AI take over the world like Skynet from the Terminator movies. Do we need to regulate the space and all this? This stuff is tough. It's like, it's genie out of the bottle on one level.

I feel, I feel we need to be prudent on how much we empower these tools. I feel it's difficult because we have a world full of different political systems, schools of thought, ambitions, and similar. So much like other groundbreaking technologies, I feel they tend to permeate and I feel they'll tend to advance in different areas of the world.

So I think there's a collective need for restraint and maybe some areas of this, like what you actually plug these things into at certain levels of ability. But otherwise generally speaking, I think there's a lot of application for them at less sensitive layers but it's evolving fast. So we're going to have to keep watching it and be mindful of that, but it is really just starting to move.

And in the market, capital markets, which I'm involved in pretty actively you may or may not be aware, there's a bunch of AI companies that have started to emerge. It's normal and an emerging trend, you know, they start privately, then they start to go public so they can access more capital and the shareholders still have the opportunity to be reasonably liquid, but also the Companies the leverage to acquire other businesses and all kinds of stuff. So there've been some first movers in the space publicly and more to come surely because there's a lot of interest. The challenge in being a public AI company, in my opinion, comes down to what often is the case with tech and software just generally is defensibility.

Chat GPT came about and then there's competition in the market pretty quickly. The competition can surely be healthy. And these types of tools certainly require a lot of resources given the amount people are using them and teams to help them grow.  But what is the defensibility of any company's particular tech? Ray Kurzweil once upon a time, I pronounced his last name properly. I believe that's it talked about singularity. It's this moment where technology is and this path where technology is accelerating the development and growth of technology is accelerating upon itself to the point of singularity.

And over the last like a hundred years, you can point to how fast we've been evolving because you develop the first thing, but the next thing you're developing is built on top of that previous discovery, right? And so things really sped up with computers and then with the internet and then now with AI, the pace of innovation is significant. And then the amount that you can figure out and build that power that's now in the palm of your hand, because chat GPT also has a mobile app.

The Microsoft edge browser that you can use Bing chat and the GPT chat through Bing with also has a mobile app. So it is also truly in the palm of your hand. And it is connected. It is in sync with your desktop, your cloud desktop browser. So all this, this power, this potential is in the palm of your hand. And you'll see if you haven't yet, how fast, if you play with this, you're able to generate results and build the things you want to build. And that includes new tech.

So the space is moving quickly and in the most advanced realms of this tech, the action reaction output is growing exponentially also where people are say, plugging in, I want to build this. And in some cases like auto GPT, being able to just tell GPT, here's what I want.

So you could say, I want you to build me a new app and the app does this. And you could add a couple more parameters and the AI just prompts for permission at every step, but basically says, okay, sure, I'll build this for you. And it starts and it says, next task, we're going to do this. You know, do you approve basically? And you go, yes.

And it keeps going and you just keep hitting the improve button until it's set everything up and built your thing for you. Basically. And we're not far off from that. Some of that's already being done. And they're talking, people are talking about having your own agent that can do this type of work and you just tell it what you want and it goes to town.

Some of that's still a bit over my head but I've been poking around at it also basically right now at these levels that I'm describing. Which is still kind of entry levels to understand this stuff, which I still believe many people are at. And possibly you listening to this, haven't tried this yet at all.

 

I’ll say something like, I would like to build this. If you are an expert on this, can you show me how to build it? Or can you tell me how to build it? Can you walk me through the steps required for me to build this and go live basically. And it'll come back and say, sure, I'm happy to do that. That sounds like a great idea. Here's the steps that we need to do. And then you say, okay, great, please walk me through what I need to do for step one, and it'll say, sure. And it gives you those answers in like 30 seconds. And then you just do the thing.

So it can walk you through what were previously like extraordinarily complex things to try and figure out if you are an expert on the topic or a heavily qualified engineer, depending on what you're trying to accomplish. So definitely on the software layers, the auto stuff, the auto GPT versions is about saying, “Hey, I want to build a new  software as a service site,” a new web app or something. It does this, and it should look like this. It needs all the elements. Can you do it? And then it just starts and you just keep approving it. Then it says, okay, done that step next step. I need to do this. Are you okay with that? You know, or do you approve or whatever? And then you say, yeah, and it keeps going.

So that's the way you can evolve with it. But just saying that's generally how this works at the moment.

The auto GPT stuff is going on right now also, but the entry kind of level of GPT stuff is where to start and get familiar with this. And then you can evolve, right? As your expertise on this stuff grows, then you can start experimenting with that sort of stuff as well. But this is the power that's in the palm of your hand right now.

And if you are not looking at this yet, honestly sign up, load it up, just open the page and just think of what you want to know. Think of things that you're trying to figure out. Think of the things you're struggling through. What your goals are and say, Hey, this is my goal. You're an expert on how to reach that goal. What do I need to do? You know, and just like start from there.

And then you'll just, you'll try new questions and you'll ask it different things. And you'll have these moments that are just exceptional breakthroughs. I just had one yesterday and I've been working on certain line of thought with this for a while and digging deeper and getting ideas and shaping this thing out, and it's taking shape and it’s great.

And I just had this like epiphany about the way to ask a question. I went, wait a second, like this, this, this, and this is related. And it was a bit of a puzzle I was trying to crack.

And so I said, Hey, this, this, this, and this are like what they are, but how are they related. And the answer I got without getting super specific, cause it's still a little bit internal stuff, strategy stuff at the moment, it just came back and went like here and it just like cracked open the code. I felt like Neo in the matrix, where you can see the matrix all of a sudden, like everything slows down and he just turns and flexes and just goes, I got it.

Iit was a big moment like that. I went, Oh buddy. So you can have those moments and then those will, you know, inspire and kind of guide you into the next questions and moments you have.

But this should be your number one assistant at your desk right now, every morning, when you go to work, when you start your work, when you're later kind of meditating on your work or whatever else in your life, it should just be on your hip. And when you have these questions come up about something you're trying to figure out, you just learn to kind of ask this resource and it'll just cut the time and the noise and it'll give you everything you need. And you know, you can refine your questions, but it's going to advance your work and get you closer towards your goals so fast and so much faster that sitting around scratching your head, struggling and wondering, like you're going to get in gear with this stuff.

Again, it's all about what are your goals? What do you want for yourself and your life? And you know, your family and similar and it's there to help you do that. So exceptional technology, amazing things coming in the future and a wave of energy in this space, like tools, AI powered elements, tools, resources that are coming out every day that can do like a whole list of things. If you're on social, you've probably seen like some of the posts or these Twitter/X threads that people sharing these are the new tools that are out today, or hey these tools are great.

If you're trying to do this and when I see those, I do save them. I do go poke around and I threw some of the tools back cause I don't feel that they're a fit, but the ones that are fit, I just add them to my list.

And I go, yeah, that one needs to be in my back pocket also for what that can do.  It's just far out and super powerful. And it's propelling me forward by leaps and bounds exponentially in a very short period of time. So I invite you to consider this for yourself and to kick it around, for business life, wellness, all kinds of different things.

Like just dive in and let me know what you think. Let me know if you have any further questions about it. Let's chat more about it as it evolves.

I probably will cause there's just so much energy and interesting, advancement and evolution around the space. So more coming on not, if you want to connect with me, you've got my links in the comments, well not the comment section, but the description section wherever you're listening to or reading this abd let me know, go get them. Just, just one step at a time, just sign up and just start asking it questions and you'll get your answers.

And those should be sufficient to start inspiring you to just dive even deeper because it's right there for you, all the time, anytime, basically. So have fun with that. Good luck with that.

Let me know how it's going. I look forward to seeing what what it does and how it, contributes to your world. And, until the next episode, have an amazing day and we'll chat with you soon.