“AI” is all the rage these days.
Tech giants are putting “powered by AI” in and on their offerings, and last week Nvidia, the top supplier of dedicated AI chips, briefly became the largest company in the world by market cap (over $3 trillion).
AI technology, which has plodded along, helpfully, but much less glamorously than some enthusiasts have been predicting for decades, has leapt forward, with huge advances in text processing and creation (not to mention images and videos).
This has spawned an industry of AI experts, some of whom are actual experts, and many of whom just want to hock the latest shiny object.
As a computer software nerd who wrote a (now ridiculously primitive) artificial intelligence program for his college independent research, I’ve been impressed by the new batch of tools, headlined by ChatGPT (GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer– here’s a Wikipedia article if you want more nerdy details), and also worried about the implications.
However, there’s no doubt in my mind that these tools provide independent consultants with tremendous capabilities, like having an always on-call intern who can perform tasks that might take a real intern hours or days in near real-time.
So I sat down to have a chat with ChatGPT itself. (Yes, this is wild.)
If you haven’t used ChatGPT before, its primary interface is a chat format, as the name suggests. But now you can literally have a spoken conversation. (There was some controversy over this feature, as it seems OpenAI wanted to license Scarlett Johansson’s voice, and when she declined, they released a voice that sounded a lot like hers.)
Note that in the first few exchanges, this is purely real time. In the latter part of the interview, I edited ChatGPT’s “thinking” time. Hopefully this gives you some sense of what the interactions are really like without belaboring the conversation too much.
It was a very weird situation, and I found myself by turns amazed, off-put, and frustrated. Perhaps like having a conversation with a person?
Anyway, ChatGPT gives some sensible advice for using AI, some of which I agree with and some of which I don’t.
Helpful Prompts
Turn a Zoom chat text file into contact information (note you may or may not want a tag column, and you’ll want to substitute in the name of your group, event, etc):
> Take this zoom chat and parse out contact details, in CSV format, adding a column for "Tags" with the value "Virtual Austin Group" in each row.
Take a chunk of contact info like an email signature, LinkedIn contact info panel, etc, and create a record in Mimiran. (Adjust the parameters for your CRM.)
> I'm going to give you some contact info, and I'd like you to parse it out and create a URL for me, starting https://app.mimiran.com/contacts/new? and then whatever fields you parse from the text, in URL parameter form. You'll be looking for first_name, last_name, email, phone, mobile_phone, linkedin, facebook, twitter, calendar, title, and company, ok?
Proofreading.
> I'm going to supply an article and I'd like you to highlight text in bold italic font if there's a grammatical or spelling error, and note superfluous that could be removed without losing meaning with square brackets. Provide a summary of your work at the end of the article.
When running this post through ChatGPT, I got:
Summary:
• Spelling and Grammar Errors:
• new (missing article “the” before “new”)
• Johansen’s (should be “Johansson’s”)
• Total: 2 errors
• Superfluous Words Highlighted:
• [–] (dash after “Transformer”)
• [in near real-time] (phrase “in near real-time” is redundant)
• Total: 2 instances
Note that it was very good at catching errors, but has a bit of a hard time with superfluous words. (Or at least, I disagree with its assessments here.)
The Wine
Reuben had a glass of Bergstrom Oregon Pinot Noir. (Actually from a previous effort to record this episode that I was not happy with, so I redid it. Not sure I’m entirely happy with this one either, it’s a little strange trying to have a conversation with a machine.)
Where to find ChatGPT
Where to find Reuben
@Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.You can also listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, or Player.fm.
Want a way to make sales and marketing fun, without being “salesy”? Try Mimiran, the CRM for elite solo consultants who love serving clients but who hate “selling”.
Unlike CRMs built for the VP of sales to keep track of a sales team, where contacts are just statistics, Mimiran is built for relationships, networking, and referrals. (See one way Mimiran makes it easier to make introductions along the lines Steve suggests.)
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