Why AI episode
Sun, Oct 15, 2023 8:06PM • 25:36
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
ai, talk, work, learn, live stream, give, expert, output, tools, write, ideas, create, podcast, book, change, potential, internet, negative ramifications, text, play
SPEAKERS
Alastair McDermott, Voiceover
Alastair McDermott 00:00
There’s a really interesting story from 1995, when Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, wrote a book called The road ahead, which was about technology changes, because a lot was happening in the world of personal computing and the internet. But the interesting thing is that in the first edition of that book, he massively downplayed the importance of the internet, compared to how things actually turned out. And in fact, months after publishing that book, he released an internal memo inside Microsoft called the Internet tidal wave. And he updated the second edition of the book to talk about the importance of the internet. But even he got it wrong at that moment, and it’s amazing to see that such forward thinking leaders in the technology world might overlook the potential of these, these emerging technologies.
Voiceover 00:56
Welcome to The Recognized Authority, a podcast that helps specialized consultants and domain experts on your journey to become known as an authority in your field. So you can increase your reach, have more impact and work with great clients. Here’s your host, Alastair McDermott,
Alastair McDermott 01:11
I think that’s what is happening right now, with a lot of people who are looking at AI, and they’re looking at what’s going on around them. I think people are not seeing the potential that it has, and the ramifications that is going to have on the way that we work the way that we think, and what we can do with with everything, it’s going to massively change the way that everybody works day to day. And it certainly changed the way that I’m working. And it’s adding a lot of capabilities, and a lot of efficiencies to my work processes. And the really interesting thing is, the way that I see this is everything that AI can do right now is only the tip of the iceberg, because these technologies are improving all the time. And what we see right now is the worst that it’s ever going to be. I think that it is super important that everybody who’s listening to this, who is probably a business leader, an expert of some kind, that everybody’s listening to this actually goes and tries out AI, and genuinely put some time into learning how to interact with it, how it works. What I’m going to do is in this episode, I’m just going to give you some practical advice around that, and help you to put in place a plan to actually start to get used to it and start to play around with it. If you haven’t already, I’m also going to give you some more advanced topics and ideas and suggestions as well, and tell you some of the things that I’ve done with it and things that I’ve learned. Before I do that, I just want to talk about this new focus of mine on AI, because that’s what a friend of mine said to me. He said, Alastair, I see that you’re talking about AI a lot recently. And so I see it’s, it’s a new business direction for you. And the truth is, this is not a new direction for me at all. And it’s not, that’s not how I see it. My goal is to help experts to become known as The Recognized Authority in their field. And that’s what I want to help you to do. The ultimate goal is to help people get inbound leads. And so what that means is that you have a lot of people interested in you and coming and finding you so that you don’t have to do referral based marketing. And you certainly don’t have to do outbound. So that’s the goal is to help you do that. And we do that by becoming known as The Recognized Authority in our field. But in order to get that recognition, what you need to do is you need to share your work, share your knowledge, share your expertise. And you need to do that by publishing. That’s one word we use for it. Content Creation is another word we use for the same thing, putting your ideas out into the world, and letting other people see it. And that’s why AI is something that I’m talking a lot about. Because there’s no better way to start to get your ideas out into the world than by using AI to support your process. Because what it will do is it will help make you much more efficient and productive in actually getting your ideas out into the world and sharing them. It will help you to brainstorm ideas. It will help you to reformat your ideas to work for different mediums, different platforms. And that’s why I think it is so absolutely important. And so that’s why I have been talking about AI a lot recently. It’s not that I’ve changed my mission or my goals or my objectives or my focus at all. AI has just happened to come along and change the way that we do that. And that’s the really interesting thing. It has gotten a lot better Suddenly, over the last 12 months, things have made massive improvements. And that now that it’s possible to do a lot of things that we couldn’t do before. And generating text that is actually good quality text, not this rubbish that we’ve seen from some of the older AI generation tools, writing tools, from three or four years ago, things have made leaps and bounds, particularly with Chuck GPT, three, and four. And they have pushed on all of the other tech giants who have been working on this have suddenly realized, hey, we need to catch up. And we need to work on this as well. And we need to release the stuff we’ve been working on internally for quite a long time. And this world of AI, I think, is really interesting. And yes, it also has negative potential. There’s a lot of negative ramifications from this as well. And we’ll also need to deal with those. But what I’m here to talk to you about is the positive side of using AI, as an expert in your field, how you can use it, and how you can use it to generate really helpful advice and content and ideas. And also to help you take what you’ve already got, reformat it. And yeah, it’s super helpful in all of those ways. So that’s what this episode is about, I’m going to talk to you about how to use AI in a very practical way, first off, how to get started with it. And then what you could actually do as an expert in your field, what you can actually do to take some of the stuff that you’ve got already, because you have a lot of expertise in your head. And you’ve also got a lot of it in documents, probably lying around on your computer, and in different places. And what we need to do as experts to become recognized in the recognition part is to actually take that knowledge and start to publish it. And AI really supports us in that goal. So that’s what this episode is about. And let’s get into it. Okay, so first off, I’m just really interested in the resistance that some people are feeling to using AI. And I understand. So there’s some people who see it as a fad. And I get that I genuinely think that is not a fad. I think that it’s a massive change in how things will work. And I think that it’s now just to the internet, like we mentioned before. And the other part of this that I’m thinking is people who see it being used badly, and feel that AI doesn’t create good quality, it doesn’t create good quality output. And that is absolutely fair as well. The issue there is, first of all, the AI development is so quick, that it’s going to be getting much better. And what we’re seeing right now is the worst it’s ever going to be. And the other part of that is that it’s very much a garbage in garbage out kind of system, where it depends on the quality of input, as well as the way that you’re using it in order to get good output. And so I want to help you to produce good quality output from AI. And I want to talk to you about how to do that in this episode. And so I see AI a bit like if an accountant in a when at the dawn of electronics, was refusing to use a calculator, or an accountant in the age of personal computing is refusing to use a spreadsheet, see it like that. It’s this really important tool that’s going to make your life much easier to exponentially increase your output and your productivity. And there’s no reason that you shouldn’t use it to support you in the work that you’re doing. And I think that the other resistance, is this actually going to replace us. Is this going to replace experts is this going to become? Is it going to be something so there’s the negative part of the impact it can have on humanity? And those are broad questions that I don’t think I’m qualified to talk about or two, but it is something I think about. And then is it just something that if I use it is that bad for is that bad for me? Is it bad for other people was bad for my thinking? Is it going to change? Am I going to get lazy or those negativities? And I think that some of those resistances are valid, but I think that the Okay, so I’m thinking about AI and the resistance that some folks are feeling to it. And I completely understand that resistance, there’s, there’s a lot of reasons why you might be feeling resistance to this. First of all, there’s this simple one of change, this is something new. And there’s always an inherent resistance inside of us to change. And it’s something that I think about anytime I see a new system come along, and I don’t want to have to learn it, I realized maybe this is something I need to learn about. So there is that inherent resistance to change. There’s also the potential negative ramifications of AI on humanity in the sense of jobs, and in the sense of culture. And who knows, like, what the kind of the continued changes, we see, there’s all sorts of negative potential from this. But the other side of it is the positive potential, which may outweigh that. And then one other negative reason why people might be resisting it, is because a lot of the output that we see so far is rubbish. And that’s, that’s a fair comment, there’s a lot of really AI generated crap out there. And what I would say about that is there’s two components to that. The first is, this is very much a garbage in garbage out kind of system. And so you have to learn how to use it properly. And also, it genuinely needs to have an expert at the steering wheel, to be able to produce expert type output at the AI is operating off of a database, a learning set of data that that is mediocre. And so what it’s going to produce, if you don’t provide any expert direction, is going to be mediocre. So we have that we have the garbage in garbage out aspect. And we also have the fact that what you’re seeing from Ai right now is the worst that it’s ever going to be because this is still very early days for this. I think that I think that the inherent resistance to change, I think we need to push through that because this is too important. I think that the benefits in terms of productivity, and those kinds of things are so huge that as experts that we should be looking to use these because they will greatly enhance our productivity and our output. And then in terms of the societal issues, and all of those potential negative ramifications. That’s above my paygrade to talk about. With the way that I think about it is yes, there definitely are those potential issues. And I strongly hope that people who can influence that are thinking about those things. And I personally, I’m looking at learning more about these systems so that I can talk with some authority on them. When I’m talking to people who may have influence. I think we need to learn more about these and how they work and what those impacts could be. But I do think that there are negatives around that. And we need to figure out what those are as well. And I think more people knowing how to use them will probably help with that. But in terms of holding back from using them, I think that as experts in our field, it’s too important an issue, not to actually look at using them. And it’s too important to a tool. And, and that’s why I would encourage you to I think that’s this is like the dawn of the internet, where people are saying, Do I really need a computer? Do I really need a website, there’s no way I’m going to have a there’s no way that everybody in the world is going to have a computer in their pocket, when in 15 years time, but that’s the way that it has gone. And I think that this is the time now to look at this and say okay, I’m going to learn a bit about how this works, and how I can use it. And then stay up to date with what’s going on so that you can take advantage of it. You can use it yourself, you can talk about it knowledgeably and maybe even impact on some of those kind of bigger issues that are that are things that we need to think about as as humanity. In this episode, I’m going to talk to you on a very practical level now about how I’m using this, how I think that you can use it and what you can use it for. So I want to give you some practical examples of what I have done with AI so far. Just to give you an idea, because I have been using it. I experimenting with it learning as much as I possibly can. Because I think that Uh, this is something that is going to be incredible for my productivity. I’m going to pull up a list of some things that I’ve done in the past three or four weeks with AI. So first off, I got to suggest book titles for my new book. So I got to suggest 15 Great book titles. And I was able to go through those and eventually pick a book title, I was also able to get it to help me write the Amazon blurb for the book, because that’s often really difficult for authors to write data because we’re really close to the content. And so I got it to help me write the marketing blurb for the book. I was running a live stream, I got him to help me write the promotional text for that live stream. And I was doing that on the fly. Just as I was about to broadcast, I was able to get a promotional text on the title for that live stream, created within about 20 seconds. So I was really able to help me on on the fly. I also drew on a quiet sheet of paper, I drew a very basic outline of a web page. And I took a photo of that. And I asked it in on the page, I wrote, I want you to create a web page, create the code for this for me. And I uploaded the photo without any further instructions. And I took that photo and actually turned it into working code. And I demonstrated that on a live stream, another live stream recently, actually, I also use it for some bigger projects. So I used it to take, I have this, this podcast is I think we’re at about episode 138 are so right now. And so I have tons and tons of transcribed conversations. So I think I’ve got at least 120 hours, if not more of these transcribed conversations. And so what I did was I fed it all of the transcriptions of every podcast episode that I have. I asked her to extract all of the key insights from all of those, we put it into a Google Doc, I did this with the help of a VA team. Actually, I’ve got a video behind the scenes video, which I’ll link in the show notes on how I actually did this. And so we ended up with just under 30,000 words, it’s a 300 page, Google Doc, with all the key insights from every episode. So that’s going to be a hugely valuable treasure trove really, of ideas for me, for my future content, I’m going to look at curating that and using that in lots of different ways as well. So that was just, that was just another thing. And by the way, I asked him to suggest me ways I could use those insights. So that’s another way you could use it. I was on a live stream with Jim James recently from The UnNoticed Entrepreneur. And he is actually creating a podcasting, a podcast guest training course, for business owners who want to guest in other people’s podcasts. And so on that live stream, what we did was we got it to outline a 12 module training course. And give us some titles for the course. And we got to to create a sales page for that course, and even create a cover image graphic. And we did all of that in a in a 60 minute livestream. And we didn’t do that we probably did all of that in about 20 minutes. And I’m not saying that’s ready to go. It’s not ready to roll out. But the output that it gave us is a starting point. And so what I’m saying here is the efficiency that we’re getting from that is just incredible. I’m going to give you some more examples here. We got it to create a conversation and imaginary conversation between Plato, Socrates and Aristotle. And I got it to write that, where they had a conversation about personal branding and authenticity, because I thought that was just interesting. So that was on another livestream that I did a few weeks back. I also got to combine a blog post that I wrote, with some podcasts that I appeared on to create a an interview with me as a guest talking about about this topic. And so first off, the transcription that I came up with, was very close to what I would actually say. And not surprising because it was actually based on my words. And this is where the garbage in garbage I think comes in. Because I fed a lot of genuine text in it was able to create something that really sounded like me. And then what I did was I cloned my voice, I recorded some versions of my voice, I cloned my voice, and I gotta to speak, the interview, I created another created a fake interviewer. And I created this interview of me being interviewed. And so all of that was completely AI generated. And that’s on an earlier episode of this podcast. And I also created a short video from a still photo of me, I’ll credit a video of me speaking for that. So we had a video to go along with that. So That’s just insane. And I know you’ve seen these kinds of these things and the video production, and those tools are still clunky, they’re not great. But again, this is the worst that’s ever going to be. And the last one was just an interesting test I did recently, I took a blog post, I pasted it into an online tool. And it created a 100% animated video with music and voiceover of that blog post. So it took that blog post, and it turned it into an animated video. And, again, it’s not amazing, but it’s pretty damn good. And that’s only going to get better. I’ve shared almost everything I’ve just talked about somewhere in my emails, my podcasts, and let me know if you need help with finding any of that. So I’m not changing my personal focus to AI. But it is something that I’m using day to day, every day. Even on the weekend, I’m using it for things that are not work related. Using it for many suggestions, I have these things in the fridge. I have these things in the fridge, and I don’t have a frying pan. So can you help me, I only have a microwave available. And when you give it that kind of context, what it does is it’s able to think around the issues and rationalize around the issues. And so what I would say to you is, if you’re listening to this and thinking, Okay, I probably need to do something with a I then do start. So play around with it, get comfortable using it, try it out for some day to day tasks, and start to learn because there are limitations. And for example, it’s not great at doing maths, it can give you some incorrect output. In terms of limitations, certain of the tools are able to take up a lot of text input, like Claude is very good. And that’s why I use Claude a lot. It can take 75,000 words, but most of the tools can take large input they can only take, I think it’s up to about 4000 words at a time. And they’re not so good at processing lots of text. But the output from those other tools like Chachi, BD is better quality than clod. So there’s different nuances between these different systems. So you got to play around with it. The other thing that it does sometimes is it hallucinates. So that’s when it just makes stuff up. And so if it’s not sure, it’s very good at making up something that sounds plausible. And this is where it can generate stuff that is dangerous to just take copy paste what it’s given us and just put that straight up on the internet, you absolutely have to sanity check all the texts that it produces for you. And that’s why I think it’s important to have an expert at the steering wheel. That’s why I think that’s crucial. I think that it’s here to stay, AI is going to only get better from here. And it’s going to have a massive impact on everything. And I think it’s better to take advantage of it rather than sit and watch it go by and say hey, I probably should have done something about that. So that’s why I’m encouraging you to to just play around, go sign up for the free version of ChatGPT beauty sign into Bing and use Bing or Google’s Bard and see if you can sign up for Claude which will allow you to input more text and play around with these tools at use dolly or mid journey or the mid journeys a bit more complex to use because of its interface. But try and use these tools and play around with them. I also have a ton of examples from live streams. If you go to my blog, you can find videos. And you can find those on my YouTube channel as well. And if you check out my LinkedIn, you’ll see me doing talking about this and posting about us. I’m still 100% on The Recognized Authority as the goal. That’s what I want to help everybody to do, who’s listening to this podcast, I want you to help. I want to help you build up your profile and become known as The Recognized Authority in your field so that you then will get inbound leads and don’t have to do marketing in any of the other ways that personally I don’t really like doing networking and referrals, or horrible DMS and cold calling and all that kind of stuff. That’s what the goal of this podcast is and will remain. But I will be talking about AI because not talking about AI as is. It’s as if I stopped talking about the importance of writing or the importance of doing video. All of these things are absolutely crucial. If you want to be recognized as an expert in your field, I wanted to make the next step super simple for you. And I’ve created a free guide to learning AI. And it’s very simple goes through all the basics. And you can find that by visiting learn AI dot guide, and I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. But that’s the website address, learn AI duck guide. I actually used AI obviously, to help create that website. And on there you can download a free guide that will break down the kind of the The step by step to getting started and playing around with things. So please feel free to go check that out and don’t lose out. Don’t don’t. I don’t want you to miss out on the opportunity. Because I think that there is an opportunity here, particularly by starting to play around with this and understanding this before other people really get on board. So thanks again. Go check out learn AI dot guide, and thanks for tuning in!
