The AI Wave Will Change Everything - How To Keep Up On The AI Trend
16 Mar 2023 · 20 min
Sean Buttner argues AI proficiency is now a survival skill, warning that those who don't learn prompt engineering risk being outsourced. He breaks down concrete uses like summarizing transcripts and generating ideas, while flagging where AI fails: relationship-heavy work, cutting-edge research, and ethical decisions.
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A change to how we are going to work and live is coming. The whole AI revolution is going to change a lot of things, and there are things that we can be doing now to make sure that we stay ahead of that huge shift. If you're able to properly identify where in your life AI is helpful, what its limitations are, how to be a prompt engineer, if you're using ChatGPT or learning the skills that you're going to need to properly utilize these new tools is going to determine how successful you are in the very near future. And anyone who doesn't learn how to engineer props or use AI to enhance how productive they are in their jobs is going to quickly find themselves in a position where they can get outsourced or eliminated altogether, in my opinion. So the skill in using AI can either help you keep ahead of that curve, help keep you employed potentially, or you can just wait until AI replaces your job. And it's all going to be based on this one fundamental question. How do you know if AI is good to use in a particular situation, in your business, in your life, or anywhere else? So I'm Sean Butner, host of the Meaningful Revolution podcast, and we talk about how we find meaning in our life, but this podcast in particular is about how we are going to have meaning redefined for us through the use of these tools. And I used to chat GPT to help me write this particular episode, to do some research. I've reformatted, and I'll go through that prom or process with y' all here today. But it's really important to be thinking about how this is going to come because I feel like this is like the Internet showing up and disrupting business all over again, right? And in a bigger way. And it'll happen quicker in my estimation. And that's exciting, right? This is the first time I've been excited for anything in the technology space in like 15 years where I'm like super pumped and super able to see how this is going to change. So, you know, I, as I said earlier, use chatbots to make this episode to inform it. I've also pulled a couple of notes from some other trainings and things that I've done as I've been learning this. And first off, I just want to say I'm still trying to figure this out, right? So I'm not an expert in AI tools. I'm learning and trying to think as someone that's the only person in my coaching business. How can I use this to make me more productive? And how can I Avoid some of the pitfalls. And we'll talk about that in this video today. So as we're thinking about AI tools, I want to point out that these tools can be used for good or evil. And it's up to us to take ownership and really claim the outputs that we're going to be creating with these tools. Right. It's really easy with technology. And you saw this happen when everything went digital, that we diffused responsibility, that, oh, if a machine does it, it doesn't really matter if it's a avatar on social media. I can say neat things and nothing will come back to me. And I want to point out that be responsible, be the type of person you would be proud if your mom knew what was going on here or your parents knew or if everyone could see what you were doing, that you would take on that responsibility of like, oh, maybe I shouldn't be a jerk or shouldn't do these types of things. So I want to address that right off the bat. As you are using these tools, it's important to understand where there are biases either towards certain ideas or against certain ideas, or that you might not have the most up to date information because as much information as these systems hold, they're not going to be able to really dive deep into the personal notes of scientists, of business people, of thought leaders, of political leaders and all that kind of stuff. So it, you have to understand that there are those limitations. And it's also, if you are in a business like I am coaching, where it's all on the coaching client relationship, that an AI tool is going to really severely limit your ability to connect if you're relying it to do those customer interactions. Right, right. And it's part of the reason why I'm, you know, a little worried about it as a coach. But I think as we go forward, what we're going to find is that there'll be more access to solving common problems. And then when you have big problems or requires a little bit more finesse or relationship, that you'll still need these relationship heavy things like sales and mentorship, coaching, management and that type of thing. So what do I have for y' all today then? On this podcast episode, I got four big ideas that I've been thinking through for ChatGPT. And I also just want to point out too below in the show notes, I'll have a link to some of the prompts and some of the responses that I'm going to talk about because it's going to be boring for me to read Those to you. So as I talk about it, I'll refer to that PDF if you're interested in learning those prompts so you can use them on ChatGPT yourself, because that's the tool I've been mostly playing around with. See below in the show notes. Sign up and get the free PDF. Okay, just very clear on that. Okay, so the first idea for trying to address the question like how do you know if AI is good to be used in your life? Is I would say to just start playing with it today, right? You can sign it up for a free account and you have access to it based on how busy it is essentially as they're building out the system. And so as the at the time of this recording there is a free option and just check it out, ask it, you know, start with what you usually ask Google and see what comes back and just get a feel for it, right? I think as someone that's been in technology for most of my life and loved technology for most of my life, so, you know, that started way when I was young and you know, went through a career in software that took me to Walmart, that took me to Apple and you know, ultimately starting my own business here. It's really important to find the fun in it, right? So like anything, it could be overwhelming or it could be a fun challenge, or it could be whatever we make it up to be. But I think the best way to get familiar with any new software, right, AI tools or not, is to just get in it and have fun. So what would be something you've always wondered about or fun thing to do with, you know, a chat type system and maybe you don't know. So start playing, right? Just get in the game, get a little bit of a feel for it. And it's also, I want to have this, I have this idea that it's way easier to learn a new technology as it's coming along than it is in the future, right? There's so much things that'll get hidden or they'll enhance it and so it'll paper over some maybe essential things you need to know about the system. In my experience, having come from, you know, HyperCard and high school and you know, some C programming all the way, you know, Java did all that and then scripting languages and Swift and all that type of stuff, you know, the technology stacks have changed dramatically from when I started to study and was interested in coding and all that stuff. And at the end of the day, you know, it's really way easier to be on the trend than trying to catch up. Right. It's always helped me really, you know, kind of stay ahead of the curve for as long as you can. It's kind of like riding a wave, you know. So also I wanted to say that, you know, as you're asking questions of like ChatGPT, you can ask it how you can ask it better questions. It's really kind of this refactor not reflect. It's a recursive questioning where it's like I asked this question how would this question be better? And it'll shoot something back. And I'll have that in that PDF that I referenced earlier that you can sign up and download for free. So it's really kind of fun and amazing and so yeah, get in the game. Start playing with Chat GPT today or your other favorite tool. The second thing to really think about in these tools is what I'm, I'm terminating, I'm coining the term right now is to become a chat jockey. Right. So knowing how to ask questions and the sequence of questions I think is going to be the essential skill skill for developing AI systems, for using it at the, you know, from a consumer end. And so how can you become an effective chat jockey? And you know, it's part of it also is knowing how to edit and refine and think about the responses that are coming back to you in a way that's ethical, in a way that's responsible, in a way that again doesn't obscure your responsibility for putting out information like that. So how. What are other components of becoming a. So it's taking ownership of the outputs, number one. Number two, in my opinion, it's experimenting with another terminal coin being a prompt engineer. Right. And so for a great prompt in my limited experience so far, it's you got to be really specific with their questions. You can ask it to be former or casual and you need to add the maximum information. And I'll again in that PDF that I referenced, I'll show you how you can create a sales letter for in an email. Right. And it's pretty amazing what comes out. It's, it's pretty good. But you also have to make sure that it sounds like you, so it might not turn entirely sound like you. So that's kind of where the, this chat jockeying and prompt engineering comes on and how do you ask it better prompts so you get better responses. You know, as a systems information systems guy, studied it in college and you know, as a master's, it's the simple phrase garbage in is garbage out. So the higher quality ingredients you're using on the pizza, the better the pizza will taste. You know, all those types of analogies, so. And again, you can ask the AI how to create better prompts, which is really more fun than I thought it'd be. So check it out. Okay. The third thing to think about when it comes to AI tools and ChatGPT is to be very clear on where the use cases where it's helpful. Right. So again, where do you think AI can help you in your business or life? For me, it's been taking transcripts from my podcast or the weekly newsletter I do. It's summarizing those to put into other content or creating social media posts or generating ideas for videos based on those transcripts. Each of these are pretty awesome use cases for me and it gets a lot of some of the grunt work done. So you can really be in your creative head. And I think that's another potential outcome of using these types of tools is if you need to be creative and you need to get a lot of sources contained, you have to. The chat tool is really good at doing those types of research functions, so that's pretty great. Also, I was at a training with so I use Kajabi for my website for my coaching business and they had a webinar on how to use AI in Kajabi to create course outlines and all sorts of cool stuff. So shout out to Kajabi. But they also if you're needing ideas on how you can use AI or how it might be relevant to you, there are sites like Future Tools IO which I'll put that link in the show notes where you can sort through all the different AI tools and see a bunch of different software that's being developed for particular use cases. So if you need some ideas, that's where you can brainstorm. Outside of where do you think it might be useful for your creativity or to help you be a little bit more productive. And you know, it's also finally in conclusion on this point is to know what the AI model is good for explicitly. I wanted to ask that question so you know, it's again good for research. It's good for taking stuff you've already created and summarizing it and cutting it up into different forms or formats. So far I think it's also really good for exploring. Right. If you just want to see like what would you tally 10 points on how to bake properly and it'll come back with some stuff and it might help generate some better ideas or Some better angles and perspectives for you. Which leads me to my next point. The fourth point is to get clear on where AI is not appropriate in your life. If you, again, if you are in a business, like a coaching business, and you're doing a lot of relationship building or relationships are really important to the process, using an AI tool to replace yourself is not a great idea. It's very, very clear there. It also is not so any type of relationship management. It's probably not awesome. It's not great at creating cutting edge. So if you're thinking like, oh, I want to know the most recent anything on physics, right? If those equations and notes and insights are in people's physical notebooks, the AI tool is going to miss it, right? So it's not on the bleeding edge, it could be on the cutting edge. And so you just have to be aware that that's a limitation. And also, like, again, you can create and transform stuff pretty quickly, but if you're going to create a new idea, I don't think AI tools right now are really good at that. Again, I'm not an expert in this and so there's that. So I'd love to be. If you have a better idea, please put it in the comments on the YouTube channel or on Apple podcasts and I'll read it. And you know, like I said, I'm still learning about all this stuff myself, but you know, I've been using some of these tools for a couple months now, but yeah, so it's not going to be the cutting edge. And finally, AI tools I don't think are really great for making decisions based on ethics or responsibility, right? Again, you have to own the outputs of it and take responsibility for it. But because there could be so many different biases in the model on either favoring certain types of outcomes or certain perspectives because it's just an algorithm. I mean, maybe it's more than just an algorithm, but it's bits of a computer that come to a conclusion that can be influenced by the data coming into it or available information or all sorts of different things. So if whatever it tells you, like, think like, how do you know it? How could you back it up with references and see where it pulled data from and, you know, make sure that you have considered the ethics of doing what you're doing before proceeding. So again, below in the show notes, there's a link to a PDF with some of the more technical things and some prompts and responses. So you can see some specific examples on how I've been using it in my coaching business or thinking about using it. You know, I've done some social media posts, but I think again, you know, start playing with the tools. You know, make sure that if you're thinking about what skills do I need to learn, like become a chat jockey and learn how to be a better prompt engineer, get clear on the AI use cases that might be helpful to you, or brainstorm where it might help you in your work and then know where it's not appropriate. Because I think too it's such a like cool hot new thing that we're all focused on the good it can do. But you know, it goes both ways. So make sure you're making those ethical decisions, whatever those ethics are. We're still, I think, trying to define those and as we go on. So with that folks, that's this episode of the Meaningful Revolution Podcast. Stay tuned to next week. I'm sure we'll have a great episode for you, and this is Sean Butner saying go live with more joy, more growth and more impact in your communities. We'll see you guys next week. Thank you for listening to the Meaningful Revolution Podcast. Do me a favor and share this with 3 friends who might like the topic of AI or ChatGPT and also might be on the path of trying to figure out how to incorporate that in their business and life. Also, if you are not already, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts and leave a comment because that really helps us grow the show and we also get to connect with you all and we get to highlight people that share stuff like Sean is such a talented interviewer, brings helpful stories from his guests and sharing lessons from his own life to benefit the listener. Thank you for sharing or insightful guests with great knowledge to share. Love this podcast and I'd love to highlight your comment on a future episode. So make sure you comment on Apple Podcasts. In the previous episode of the Meaningful Revolution we talked about resolving inner conflicts with Nate Smith. It's an amazing discussion. I really enjoyed it. I took a ton of notes and I know that you'll love it. So make sure you check out the last pot episode of Meaningful Revolution with Nate Smith and we'll see you guys next week.
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