Gen AI is the biggest revolution I have seen in my working career

Working in the new world of Gen AI feels like possessing a superpower

I have been reading about Gen AI ever since ChatGPT came into our lives from Nov end of 2022. I gathered that, as I read more about it, it is going to take over, both personal and professional life, faster than we can think it will. Definitely, like we entered an era post internet, we are now entering an era, called post Gen AI era.

I had been attending GrowthSchool sessions for over a year now and was highly impressed by their cutting edge content classes, until I attended a demo class on Build with AI from BuildSchool and got pulled in to become a learner myself.

With the evolution of AI from Turing Test days to today's AI Agents, the world is moving very fast to see AI taking over our world like never before.

My understanding of why suddenly AI is catching attention

1. While AI has been in our lives in the form of Supercomputer (remember Deep Blue beating Garry Kasparov),Siri, Alexa, Predictive word in typing emails, Robotics etc., it is not until the advent of Supercomputing power of large data by Large Language models (LLMs), Natural Language Processors (NLPs) and Neural Networks, multi modality capabilities of text, image,video, audio both on input and output side that has made it easy to not only access but also easy for non-coders like me to build it for our own use, whether personal or professional.
2. Until there is a leadership view on the role of AI in their organization, it is a side hustle or a fun project for the early adopters. The commitment has to come from the top, it no longer is a competitive advantage, it is now a question of your survival. And you can see it happening around you, whether by corporates, government or academia, everyone is driving it hard and fast.

Use case of Gen AI and how to extract the best value from it

1. A simple way to evaluate is that anything which can be solved first in the following order is more likely to be taken over by AI.

Time >Efforts > Costs> Accuracy> Scale > Talent > Judgement > Creativity > Complexity.

Simply explained, you will be willing for AI to take over writing your emails/ blogs but not driving your autonomous car.

Some of the benefits that were not a reality till some time back, today is just a click away, these can be your clone personal assistant, your industry specific most mundane to sophisticated task automation, workflow optimization, self web browsing, image generation, code interpretation, competitive intelligence analysis, legal document simplification, scenario planning and risk management, cross-cultural sentiments, AI powered idea generation, personalised auto employee onboarding, no human assisted front desk, meeting note takers, real time sales data analysis, customer support automation, event planning, personalised coach, post-mortem of projects, Marketing campaign automation, brand voice consistency check, SEO optimization, crisis communication, etc., the list can go on and on. You must be wondering, many of these were already possible. Well the point is, now Gen AI makes even a no coder like myself build it, and you do not need a large cross-functional project team or IT consultants working on it.

2. The ease of multiple options like Perplexity, Co-Pilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Llama 3, Gemini Pro 1.5 is what is making many of us adopt it widely and using it in our daily lives. You can even input from one LLM into the other to get better inputs. It is almost making two best minds work on the same problem. Also, do not worry, you can ask ChatGPT which one to use for what purpose.

3. You need high clarity of what you are solving, be creative enough to train GPT to develop it and don't forget to validate it with few. The time between an idea and developing a customised GPT can be as less as 30 mins. And what is interesting is, you can integrate APIs from free marketplace like RAPID API sites to enhance the features of your GPT product.

We saw several examples made by my co-learners, Job skill assist, Introduce Me app, Parenting Assist, Travel planner, Meal planner, Blog maker etc., the list goes on and on.

I, too, made my first customised GPT product with help of my team members, it is called Wishes from the Heart, (click on it) it your assistant to personalise your wish, it creates thoughtful, fun, or motivational wishes with personalised options at each step. It also accepts input from the LinkedIn profile of someone you want to wish for a professional achievement, it will scrap the person's profile for better understanding and recommend you a wish. I have used it for real situations and shared with a few superusers too, and got a great response from receivers as well as users. Do use it and share your feedback. And spread the link with others.

4. In order to extract deeper meaning, apart from becoming an expert in Prompt engineering, adapt role-based prompting technique, for e.g., act like an Educator, a Strategist, a Columnist, a Podcast host, a scriptwriter etc., and you will see the magic in your output.

5. For Visual / Image generation, one needs to develop visual descriptive language skill, that should include vivid description with adverbs/adjectives, sensory details, type of action, environment, lighting, mood, composition etc. You can cue specific artistic styles and movements too. You will be amazed by the no. of tools available to make video and images out there. Try Leonardo, Runway, Dall-E, Pika, LTX Studio, HeyGen and Bing to start with. Try surprise me mode in some of them.

6. Treat AI like a human, interact with it like a friend, even like a chotu. Assume it is the worst AI you are using, so make it understand as much as you can of why, what and how you need it.

7. Agents is a whole new area of application of AI. Just like SIRI, Google Assistant, chatbots, you can make your own AI agents. Consider Agent as an interface between you and LLMs, and it will act as your prompt and deliver it with help of some more tools. There are several tools to make agents, Vertex by Google is a great platform to build. ChatGPT is an agent, if you didn’t know.

8. Use of AI agents takes productivity and usability to a completely new level. One can use them as a single agent or multi agents AI, it can magnify the use factor multiple times. Take the example of you wanting to blog a week. You can develop a GPT that has multi agents working for you. One agent acts as a researcher, 2nd agent acts as a writer and 3rd agent as an editor, and 4th agent can act as a Publisher that can post for you on social media or even send to your defined email or WhatsApp circulation list.

Not all is hunky-dory with AI

1. There are issues of Scalability, Ethics, Safety, Security in the world of AI. The responsibility to use AI in the right manner by its users is now even more important than ever before as its ease of use is going up.
2. Data is a huge issue- whether availability or quality. Companies that have built quality data, will harness it first and most.
3. There is a concept called Synthetic data, which is AI is creating data to train itself as it is otherwise expensive to get or fill gaps in data, it can expose real personal information. It should be used with proper care else it may amplify biases or ignore complexities of the real world.
4. As AI is getting more intelligent and human-like, chances of it to hallucinate is even more. We need to ground them in reality, so they don’t make stuff up.
5. One of the biggest risks with AI is the bias as it is trained on past data.
6. There is a lack of accountability, one should not trust AI completely, someone human still has to be made accountable for it.

Some watch outs for your learning

1. Be organised about your learning. You could be overwhelmed with a lot of jargon, concepts and tools, so stay focussed.
2. Collaborate with others, everyone brings some expertise on the table, leverage it and learn from them.
3. Be wary of the Shiny objects’ syndrome, having too many ideas will not get you much ahead. Go deep in solving one problem by using the full suite of offering from AI and that will build your confidence to master AI

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This journey has just started, my mind is already buzzing with a lot of use cases that I can apply in the field of sales and marketing. In my next article, I wish to share some of the use cases for sales and marketing.

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Just like any sport, the more you will play it, the more you will get better at it, and also discover a new you. It’s time to pick a new sport in your life. Time to play with AI and its tools and get fitter in your mind and explore within you.

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