Every week, more than once a week, I'm offered an AI solution to the problems that I seem to have. People send me links to AI products or offerings that can make things faster, remove the overwhelm, and make things easier.
Just to be clear, at the moment I have two subscribed AI LLMs. One is ChatGPT —the OG. I pay for it because I use it regularly, and I'm learning how to use it better and better. Generally, for projects or for significant questions, I want a deep, meaningful answer that can steer me with insight in the right direction.
Second is perplexity AI. I use it for two purposes.
Number 1, it's completely substituted Google for my life (Seth Godin told me that would happen, and he was right). I never search on Google anymore; in fact, I can't understand why I would.
Secondly, it’s very good for uploading documents and summarising, and so when someone sends me a whole host of AI documents that they've created, or one large document in 10 pages that they've created from AI (usually from chat GPT), and you can and you can spot it a mile off and chuck it into perplexity and ask it to summarise it down to 1 page.
The rationale here is that it's faster than me, but not necessarily better than me, but the truth is that if I try to summarise a 10-page document myself, I'm liable to miss something, and so is ChatGPT or perplexity, and so, between us, we're probably as good as each other.
What the clever people seem to be doing now, though, is looking at what comes after this. So, AI is a tool (at least at the moment before it becomes a master).
It's designed to make your life better; it’s designed to make your work better. Remember the old Campbell adage: ‘your work exists to give you the life that you want’. Is it possible that we're going to reach a stage where we won't have to go to work, because AI will do it?
That's far into the future, but we have certainly reached the stage where AI has already taken a considerable number of jobs.
If you haven't noticed this, you soon will.
I was on the tube in London a few weeks ago, looking at the adverts suggesting that people who qualified in finance, law or accountancy might want to switch to becoming a plumber or an electrician, and offering courses in that direction. I know several people at A-level age who are considering this. I look at my daughter, trying to get a job after finishing university this year, and how difficult it is to do that.
And so, what comes after AI? One of the things that will come after this is that lots of people won't have a job. At least for a while until society repurposes itself, and people need a job. They don't need a job just for money; they need a job for purpose.
It's fine to use AI to make things quicker, faster, or 'easier'. But is it possible to use it to make things better?
If what you're doing is doing your homework, in 10% of the time it took you to do your homework, then sitting, scrolling through Instagram, or watching YouTube.
I'm not sure it's better.
Blog Post Number - 4343
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