But I like my typewriter!
I’ve been keeping a watchful eye on all these developments related to AI, as has everyone else in the digital publishing industry. There are definite uncertainties regarding AI, but it is intriguing isn’t it?
Earlier this year I published a couple of podcasts about my thoughts on how AI should be utilized. Essentially my opinion boiled down to it’s absolutely useful, a game changer as to how content is created and published, yet there should be definite boundaries as to how it is used.
For example, some of my colleagues in the podcasting space have been raving about a service called Capsho which allows a podcaster to input their audio, brew a cup of joe, during which the AI creates a podcast title, description, time stamps, resources section, etc.
No way can the fastest human show notes writer come close to that speed – and forget about the cup of coffee, brew that before going to work. I decided to give the service a shot with their free trial and honestly it wasn’t bad. It lacked the personal emphasis and my own flair in writing, but in the spirit of “don’t let great get in the way of good enough” Capsho fits the bill. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to a novice DIY podcaster on a budget to get their stuff “out there.”
My concern was this AI promotes laziness, or maybe it causes folks to miss out on some of the benefits of good old hard work. If a machine does your writing and thinking for you, how can you learn to think for yourself? It’s a legit concern.
But at the same time, I don’t want to be like the writer holed up in his cave pounding out error-riddled material on his trusty typewriter while the rest of the world is using computers to do the manual labor much more efficiently. I’ve decided to give things like ChatGPT a fair shot and seeing what’s possible with it. And after trying it out, I’m hooked! To the point it pains me to see the speed at which this very email is written compared to the speed at which my new BFF churns stuff out – sans mistakes.
There are other services I’m checking out that create audiobooks with a simple feeding in of the text, brew your green tea, and voila! there’s your audiobook. Basically any type of content in existence is affected by AI – and it’s here to stay. People used to say the Blockchain was going to revolutionize the world in the same way the Internet did. I don’t think that quite happened to that degree, but AI definitely fits the bill with its ease of use and very lifelike artistic renderings.
So I’ll continue to check it out with a healthy degree of skepticism and use it when I feel it can supplement rather than replace my artistic endeavors as an Independent Publisher and Performing Artist. In the meantime, I have some resources to share with you regarding AI you might find useful.
First is the podcasts I recorded on the topic:
Next is a fellow named Zain Kahn (probably not his given name, but who cares about that anymore) who publishes a newsletter called Superhuman AI. I’ve been reading this material, and they even give a cheat sheet on how to navigate Chat GPT when you subscribe to their email newsletter.
That link is: https://www.joinsuperhuman.ai/