AI: The Plot Thickens (And So Does Its Intelligence)

When I wrote last week’s Substack about AI, I expected the same sort of response I usually get: a few likes, maybe a comment or two and then the occasional incredibly kind email from a reader telling me how much they like this Substack.

I had not been expecting (as of now):

• 102 likes

• 38 comments

• 12 restacks

• Nearly 100 new subscibers

The topic touched a nerve and that’s awesome. Of course, touching a nerve comes with some hits and I first got wind of the fact that nerves were being touched when I randomly signed onto Facebook1 and realized that when I posted about a link to my Substack on Instagram, it also went on Facebook. Instagram had a lukewarm response. On Facebook, however, I was being called stupid and accused of not having experienced having my work stolen by AI (if they’d read the piece, they’d have known that wasn’t true).

But the comments on the actual post are astoundingly nice. I didn’t realize how many people there were who agreed with me about AI but who didn’t feel like they were allowed to express it. And the people who disagreed had such clear, salient points. To be clear, I 100% understand the risks, both for our children and for humanity. My point was that those risks are here but so are many benefits so why not enjoy the benefits rather than just lament the risks?

Also, yes we can make predictions but we cannot see the future. Heavily anticipated horrors often never arrive (Y2K survivors, raise your hands) while horrors we never expected can subsume us (insert your own parenthetical). So doomsday propheciers seem to only succeed in making the time before the anticipated horrible thing miserable. Life seems hard enough without that, no?

For anyone wanting to explore the AI world more, here’s a (partial) list of the way I’ve used Claude in the past month: 

• I uploaded a client’s book and asked for it to take the best 20 quotes to make into social media posts.

• I took a friend’s (way too long) book and asked Claude for suggestions for cuts. My friend and his cowriter had planned to go and ask dozens of people for feedback to figure out what to cut. Can you imagine how long it would take 12 people to provide feedback on 700 pages? I can barely get feedback on seven words! Anyway, they’re now rewriting the book based on Claude’s feedback.

• I asked it for clever names for a podcast I’m considering starting.

• I asked it to convert a book into a PowerPoint presentation.

• I asked it to help me shorten a client’s bio.

• I asked it to help me write a client’s book description, incorporating in keywords I wanted it to have.

• I asked it to give me potential chapter titles for the novel I’m writing.

• I asked it for some “elegant” last names because there’s a very wealthy family in the novel and the only last name that was coming to mind was Ratliff2

• I asked it for recommendations for podcasts we could pitch a client to.

• I asked it for help coming up with social media posts congratulating clients on their book launches.

• I asked it to explain why the layout of a certain book wasn’t working and how to make a certain page end up on the left and another on the right.

• I asked it for five facts about Garcelle Beauvais, since I was going to be introducing her at my client Christos Garkinos’ launch

That is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. And please note: not one of these things infringed on my creativity at all. It just saved me from having to spend the time I would spend being creative on things I don’t like doing.