I have just had a mildly disturbing experience with more than a hint of Inception about it.
I am still trying to make sense of what this means for my workflow going forward.
So, as you probably know, with NewOrbit Ltd I occasionally make videos on our YouTube channel (https://lnkd.in/ezn9Y8AU) and here on LinkedIn about technology and the intersection with business. Recently that has been about AI more than other things.
My colleague Nathan took some of those videos about AI and fed them to another AI (Google's NotebookLM) and asked it to create a podcast (listen here: https://lnkd.in/eRJnjVQV) out of it.
The result is what genuinely and completely sounds like two humans discussing the concepts I talk about in those videos. If I hadn't known it was AI generated I really don't think I would have guessed. As it was, it was a bit spooky.
So what does this mean?
On the one hand, I can certainly pick some flaws in how the AI interpreted my meaning. But, frankly, the level of accuracy is about on a par with what I would normally expect from a "chat focused" podcast - probably better, actually.
The "chat format" has the characteristic of being lower on actual information content (so it is easier for both AI and humans to create). But the resulting podcast adds a huge amount of human context and emotion to the rather dry videos I produced.
Read that again: The AI took content produced by a human and *made it more human*.
I am now pondering how to use that in my work going forward. At its simplest, I can certainly see a benefit in using it as-is, to produce an easier-to-digest summary of my more technical work. But, what if I use AI earlier in my creative process? What if I take my initial scripts and ask an AI to turn them into a script for a podcast, for example. Will that give me ideas on how to make the videos more "human" and digestible in the first place? As Andrew Ng is fond of saying - using AI as a writing partner that you "talk to" about what you are writing can be hugely beneficial.
I have much to think about.
One final thought. When word processors came out, they didn't replace typewriters like-for-like. What actually happened is that the expected standard of output went up and we probably didn't save very much time overall, in the end. Maybe, at least for some things, AI for writing will have a similar trajectory: Right now, AI can probably help you produce the same quantity and quality of output in less time. But I wonder if we'll end up raising the bar because AI enables us to. Would be a shame, I think.
