Wednesday, a day that was not scheduled to dive head first into an Artificial Intelligence Primer, was dripping in it.

I’ve spent as much time on the road and out of state as I’ve spent in the state this year, which will stretch your writing abilities to write in less-than-optimal settings. The flip side is it gives you much more content, discussions, and ideas to pull from to write about. Today’s newsletter is proof, with no specific highlights, just three stories from experiences, discussions, and meetings I had today that all involved a section of AI. From the best use case for AI in business to a radio show that used ChatGPT to create a playlist live on the air and, finally, a dinner conversation with people I’ve known for almost 40 years. These experiences were part of a more considerable discussion on learning, technology, progress, and time. None were scheduled in advance or scripted, yet they all covered similar themes.

It’s not the typical highlight + analysis newsletter we produce, but the conversations were as good as the many daily highlights we spotlight. Sometimes it’s good to throw a curve ball when your audience gets to use the heater and then wait for the feedback. Let us know what you think in the comments.

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NNothing on the calendar today suggested it would all be about AI; it’s like the floating algorithm we feel watches and listens to us through the mysterious ads and stories served up by our favorite social media apps. AI showing up in our feeds is not unusual; we have been researching new and emerging tech for years; what is new is colleagues calling us about AI when all we’ve done to date is write about it.

A question was asked by many people, and today the question was asked to me when I was on a call with a person who was trying to determine if he needed to know what it was and if he needed it. At the most basic level, this question is part of the challenge of trying to explain it. A large language model (LLM) trained over the years on mountains of data can be perceived as a giant letter calculator - input letters in the prompt. The magic machines analyze it and predict the following letter in your requested string. How many of us know how a simple desk calculator works? I do not, but I know that when I ask it 2 + 2, the answer is 4. The difference between a desktop calculator and ChatGPT is that I know how to confirm the answers the calculator gives me. I learned math, which helps me determine if the data I’m looking at is true or false.

The best way to take advantage of machine learning, language models, prompts, designs, and creative endeavors that involve technology is to ask good questions, read the information, determine how things work, introduce processes, test, and expand. Or make up fake songs sung by famous people - depends on what you are into! The advantage will go to the learning, first done by people. The more well-read you are, the faster you determine the validity of your reading, hearing, or seeing. Lawyers don’t know a secret legal language (besides a lot of Latin). Still, lawyers have read, studied, practiced, and tested for years and years to pull up the correct information for the right situation faster than people who aren’t lawyers.

The applications of this new technology will be life-changing. In the conversations this morning, I talked about how Office Suite software like Microsoft Office combined spreadsheets, word documents, templates, presentations, and email into one application, ultimately changing who could work on what, when they could work on it, and how it would be distributed. My first office job was in the early 90s, and to get a memo out to a team, you wrote the memo on actual paper and put it in an outbox; another person picked it up out of the box and typed up the handwritten memo and returned it to your inbox for your review, you made changed to the typed version and put it back in the outbox. It was retyped and given back, and after final approval, copied and physically put into mailbox cubby hole things. Today it took me longer to write the above paragraph than it takes most people in a corporate setting to notify thousands in a memo format about anything.

The last set of questions I got today were the ones I always get when something new and complex hits the market. Where’s the opportunity and the investment? The answer is the same: you have to understand the technology, its use, and where it’s headed. Until you know, it’s a tough bet and hard to hedge against. Thousands of companies already use this new technology to write, design, analyze, and, in some cases, build on input and prompts. Another wild west of opportunities and applications is already upon us, but if you don’t know what you are looking for or what it’s for, it can’t help.

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At a recent dinner with a few of my best friends I have known for almost 40 years, the subject of AI came up, and the variety of topics, questions, and assumptions flowed from our discussion was fascinating. Everyone in our group is a successful professional in their field; all work in service-related professions, and all of us Gen-Xers work for the success we have all been blessed to achieve. Around the table was a civil engineer working more now than he did 20 years ago due to the challenges of finding entry-level engineers to work at his company. Another is an environmental consultant focused on industrial hygiene and a newspaper publisher who founded and ran a newspaper and media company for almost 30 years. This brain trust was gathered by yours truly, an entrepreneur, writer, and publisher who makes it up as he goes along!

All three of my friends are more intelligent than I am, and all have succeeded due to their smarts and persistence to finish the job with long-term consistency. All have also been typical Company Men. They have stayed with the same company for most of their careers and gained promotions and expanded responsibilities due to excellent work and consistency. Unfortunately, the consistency and persistence of keeping each of them at the office too late during the week haven’t allowed them to think outside the box and at the emerging tech that will change the nature of work and could enhance the work that can be done. If you spend too much time with your head down doing the job the way it’s always been done, and it takes longer with fewer available people, you might miss what’s coming. When it does, the cold reality of business won’t care how many extra hours you put in to keep the machine running the old way.

Unless one of your best friends sees it coming and says…

The Artificial Episode…

Mark Hoppus and the panel use AI to create a playlist full of bangers.

Nothing artificial about this.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

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Thank you for spending a few minutes with us. Here’s one for the road!

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

7 minutes of good cheer every day. Become a Fan to get daily posts and updates.

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