I recently had a breakthrough talking to a computer while walking my dog. Creating a family meal plan had been on my to-do list for about a year and it was catching on. Writing down what everyone, including my 1-year-old, will eat at every meal for the next week and then figuring out what to get at the grocery store—it’s a real chore. So, holding the dog’s hand, I asked an AI assistant to do it for me.
It took about three seconds, and I was done with meal planning and grocery lists. Some of the food matched what we were doing, so I knew it was right. Others were more creative than I expected, like giving our baby a bean salad. I somehow felt both productive and humble. I also felt a little less burnt.
This probably sounds pretty obvious, if you’re someone who’s been optimizing life since ChatGPT launched two years ago. Yes, AI can take boring tasks that you don’t want to do and complete them quickly without complaint But I’m guessing most people aren’t sure how to use generative AI tools yet, so They are not using them.
Take my advice: Ask to do something boring that you’ve been wanting to do but haven’t had time for.
Maybe you need to write a thoughtful birthday card to an aunt you don’t know very well, or you need to come up with a new workout plan. You might be surprised how well AI does such boring tasks and how relieved you are to see AI doing basic helpful things instead of destroying mankind.
The tension between AI as a problem solver and AI as a source of new problems is something you have to reconcile if you want to understand the technology, according to Ethan Malikis an adjunct professor at Wharton and author of the newsletter One Useful Thing. Much has been written about Mallick Practical uses of AIAnd he said that Using an AI tool for about 10 hours This is the best way to figure out how it will work for you.
“I think to really get this product you have to go from relief to awe and existential dread,” Mallick told me recently.
The thing is, I probably spent about 10 hours trying to figure out how to use the AI before it finally clicked for me in my daily life. Most of those times were at work, as I tried to get ChatGPT or Claude to explain complicated things and struggled to know which was right. It was finally getting the AI to do a boring task — write a complicated meal plan complete with grocery list — that brought me to that point of wonder. And I’m currently dealing with a bit of fear as I try to figure out how to get AI to solve more problems.
AI models are getting more powerful and sophisticated every day. Many companies are spending billions of dollars as they compete to create better models. OpenAI On track to lose $5 billion This year, when Microsoft A staggering $19 billion cost In just one quarter it ramps up various AI-related projects. Even Mark Zuckerberg He said in surprise That’s how much his company, Meta, is spending on the data centers and chips needed to stay in the AI race.
All these big numbers tell me that AI is only going to become more prevalent in our daily lives. This push isn’t just about populating the web with smart chatbots, and A flood of AI slop Rarely is the biggest problem we face as we shift paradigms. Researchers can’t even agree on what AI’s biggest danger will be. At the very least, we should all start questioning reality more often, because AI is getting awfully good at cheating.
We’re already starting to see some of the next-generation AI products that tech companies are throwing money at. OpenAI is doing one New product announcements in the holiday-themed “12 Days of OpenAI” series That includes breakthroughs like a photorealistic video generator and ChatGPT integration on iOS and macOS devices. Apple uses intelligence. Microsoft, meanwhile, announced Copilot Vision, an AI that can see what you’re doing on the web and talk to you about it. In a recent interview, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleiman told me that this is the first step toward a future where AI can do more for us.
“It should be able for you to take actions, fill out forms, buy things, book things, plan, navigate, click drop-down menus and more,” Suleman said. “That’s all coming down the road and in the near future.”
The big ambitions of the tech industry are a bit of a distraction for the average user. The mind-bending things that AI can do don’t actually affect my life every day, but I’d be thrilled if I could get the technology to do some of the more boring stuff. Mallick has covered this concept extensively in his writings. I would even argue that his latest newsletter addition is clearly titled “15 times to use AI, and not 5 times“I had to ask that meal plan question.
It took me about 10 hours of failing using the AI before I started to feel successful and amazed. It’s easy for me to say now that it was time well spent because it certainly didn’t feel like it when I was tinkering with it and failing to find it useful. Then again, one of the reasons I put off boring tasks is because I’m usually too bored to do them. If an omniscient computer-based intelligence is the solution to that burnout problem, I’ll take it.
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