Tag Archives: ai

The Impact of GenAI on Human Creativity

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A brain in a box. By: Midjourney

Our work should never be just about our tools. It’s about the thinking behind them. Much of the GenAI debate has focused on whether and how well the tool “works” and what or who it can or can’t replace. But recently, I’ve been thinking more about its impact on how we think. And I suspect this question will only become more important as AI works better — or at least seems to.

Technology revolutions are always a double-edged sword. They bring leaps forward but come at a price. Our foundational myths make this clear: Prometheus gave humanity fire, but his punishment was eternal suffering. Pandora got all of the gods’ gifts and a box that unleashed chaos on the world. The forbidden fruit gave Adam and Eve knowledge — but at the cost of innocence and paradise lost. The lesson is old: power and progress always have trade-offs.

The tools that shape us

One of the core reasons for this dynamic is simple: we shape our tools, and in return, they shape us. Often in unexpected ways. Media theorist Marshall McLuhan famously explored this idea, though the oft-cited quote “We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us” was actually a later paraphrase of his work. The idea, however, holds — every major technological shift alters not just how we work, but how we think.

This reminds me of a favourite quote (edited for brevity) from Neil Postman, who in Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), argued:

“Tools hint at a form of thinking. Nature doesn’t speak, we talk about it, in any way we can. We see only our discourse about the world, this is our means of communication, the means are our metaphors and our metaphors create the content of our culture.”

When I first read Postman in my 20s, while deeply in love with the emerging web, I wondered what he’d say about the Internet, and found him fascinating but a bit of an alarmist. I was wrong. While he was warning about the impact of television (as form, not content), many of his fears proved accurate and apply to our world today: politics became entertainment, news became infotainment, and serious discourse struggled to survive in an attention economy.

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Mind the drift: NotebookLM, WhatsApp chats, and the illusion of understanding

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Generated by Midjourney 5

About a week ago, I experienced the most incredible AI demo since my first encounter with ChatGPT. Trust me, this is no exaggeration.

This post isn’t just about a cool tool; it also touches upon a crucial, unresolved issue in the world of Generative AI: handling those massive, complex data sets that are key to unlocking deeper value in many business and research areas.

Enter NotebookLM

I recently had a strategy brainstorming session with Angus Grundy (Angus is developing highly effective strategic frameworks; reach out to him if you’re looking to strategise/plan or think things through in any business or personal context. Insights guaranteed.). We recorded our 90-minute chat using Zoom’s AI assistant. Later, Angus used that transcript with Google’s experimental tool, NotebookLM.

On some levels, NotebookLM is a game-changer. You can upload extensive data sets (up to 50 files of 500,000 words each. That’s nearly 50 War and Peaces!) and interact with a chatbot in elaborate ways. You can ask highly specific questions and generate timelines, study guides, FAQs… all cross-referenced to your sources. You can then create notes from the chat results or add your own, shift focus between sources, manipulate it all, and more. You can even create, at the push of a button, an “audio overview,” where two AIs create a podcast-like discussion about the content. It’s as strange as it is delightful. But is it actually useful?

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Turn AI chatbots into better writing partners: a step-by-step guide for the less famous

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This simple process, taking as little as 15–30 minutes with the majority of the work done by the AI, creates a bespoke tool that enhances all your future AI-assisted writing.

The approach

Prof Scott Galloway mentioned in a recent podcast how, while feeling unhappy with the ending of a column he wrote one night, he asked a chatbot to write an alternative ending paragraph in his style and was pleasantly surprised by the result.

Writers often have mixed feelings about the fact that AI models have been trained on their writing. The silver lining for them is that when well-known writers work with AI, they can ask it to write in their style and get better results. But what about the rest of us?

As someone who values both creativity and strategic thinking, I’ve always been meticulous about my writing. To be honest, it’s probably the reason why I’m not as prolific as many others. 🤷 When I started using AI tools like ChatGPT, I quickly encountered a different limitation — how generic both style and advice can get. Of course, I could prompt: “Rewrite this post in a style combining the best of Mark Ritson and Malcolm Gladwell”, but what would be the point? I want my writing to be in my voice and to reflect my specific views and needs.

My objective was to ensure the chatbots helped me maintain my unique voice and thought process. I wanted them to assist me not only as copyeditors and proofreaders but also to be more useful as sparring partners while not wasting my time with views I fundamentally reject. I also wanted a tool that would allow me to “prime” the AI and start writing immediately without wasting time on repetitive tasks each time I start a new project.

To do this, I used the AI to create a personalised writing guide for the AI.

The process I used is straightforward and could be useful for anyone looking to collaborate effectively with AI. Today, I’m sharing how you can do the same, with the AI doing most of the heavy lifting.

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Language-Based AI: The Photoshop of Knowledge Work

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Adobe stock. Seemed only fair.

All analogies are flawed, but some are useful.

Language-based AI is like Photoshop for the rest of us. 🖥️💃⚡

Hear me out… (less than 2-minute read)

In the world of graphic design, there was a time when only the most skilled designers could create high-quality visuals. It required many years of training and was a time-consuming manual craft.

But then, a tool emerged that changed everything — Photoshop. Suddenly, everyone with a computer could create stunning graphics, and the speed of production increased exponentially. This tool democratised the craft of design, making it accessible to the masses.

Adobe’s Creative Cloud approached 30 million paid subscribers last December. 🤯

However, despite this democratisation, not all designers were suddenly equal, nor will they ever be. Just as it is with many types of skills and tools — equal access doesn’t guarantee equal performance, let alone greatness.

But wait, there’s more to this analogy. 🤓

Photoshop was more than just a tool for making graphics. It also enabled designers to experiment with new techniques (that in the wrong hands scream “photoshop”), create unique styles, and push the boundaries of what was possible in design. And they still use real-world materials and inspiration.

Do designers have to keep up with the evolution of Photoshop? Most of them do. Or you can find your comfort zone and stay there. But unless you’re amazing, it comes at a price. Or you can decide you’re a 100% old-school craft artisan or let someone else import your work into Photoshop. There are implications for that too.

The arrival of AI in knowledge work is like Photoshop for the rest of us. AI is transforming the way knowledge workers operate, automating tasks we didn’t think could be automated, speeding things up exponentially, and providing new possibilities previously impossible.

But like with Photoshop, AI still requires human expertise to use effectively.

You are the designer, not AI.

Education, talent, and hard work still count. Hard work beats talent sometimes, but only up to a degree.

The power of AI lies in the hands of those willing to keep learning and adapting to the technology. But just because you have access to AI tools doesn’t make you a master of your field.

And downloading a pirated copy of Photoshop doesn’t make your nephew a top-tier graphic designer.

But maybe he could help you with that lost dog ad or retouch your dating photos.

Speaking of which, have you tried using it for job applications? It’s a game-changer. 😅

Finally, word processors that can actually process words.

But that’s another analogy…

Beyond the Hype: A Friendly and Sceptic User’s Guide to ChatGPT (v1.5)

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Intro, or “Why like this!?” 

This guide is a labour of love for humans, not technology. It was born from my frustration with current writing about ChatGPT in general, and practical advice on LinkedIn in particular. And honestly — from a feeling of urgency, as I fear the bad advice will take hold and create bad business outputs, damaging careers and adoption rates for AI.  

Currently, the debate about ChatGPT’s usefulness (and the usefulness of language model chatbots in general) is dominated by the question “Is it a search killer?”. I believe this question comes from a spin that Big Tech propagates because it’s good for the share price. You can find my full view on that here.  But when this spin spreads into the practical discussion, framing our perceptions of how this tool may change our industry (by which I mean marketing, strategy, brand, media, creative, design, advertising, content, digital), the result is a blurry vision of what ChatGPT can do.  

This ‘blurry vision’ framing usually results in three kinds of ‘advice’:

  1. Don’t believe the hype
    “Look at the mistakes it makes, LOL; it’s not even as good as Google; there’s no serious use-case here. It’s a toy.” 
  2. This changes everything (superficially)
    “ChatGPT can do everything. Not only has research changed forever, and we no longer need to use search engines, but look at this brilliant [insert dull and superficial result] to [a crucial, nuanced and deep business/marketing/creative task].” 
  3. Moar content! Zero effort! 

“Here’s a listicle about how to use ChatGPT to create the most boring spammy articles and posts the world has ever seen.”

None of these are helpful,  or give meaningful guidance about how to use these new tools in our daily working life. Rather, they lead you down a garden path, at the end of which there’s a fork in the road and a signpost that reads, “this way to arid desert” or “this way to cloud-cuckoo-land”. 

Read the full guide here.

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