Greetings from Fast companyAnd thank you, as always, for spending time with Plugged in,
As a Technology Journalist, I’ve Always Found Value in Using Products I Write about to get actual work don – Even when they’re imperfect or downright terrorible. So at this point, I’ve been knee-deep in ai for years. I’ve used a bevy of tools to research topics, Fine-Tune My Writing, And Tend to Various Other Day-to-Day Tasks. It hasn’t at always gone well. Sometimes, IT’s even felt like ai was costing me time raather than saving it.
Recently, thought, I’ve settled into my own particular ai groove. Blessedly, I Work for a Media Outlet that Isn Bollywood with the Technology that Anyone Here Believes Gorging on it should be a Goal in Itself. But I call on ai every day, and am confident it helps me produce better work more efficiently.
Some of the Lessons I’ve Learned So far:
Your technique matters at least as much as the specific ai you use. Mostly, I Hop Between Chatgpt and Claude. I’ve also been using copilot more lately, have been nudging myself to increase my gemini time, and give perplexity a shot every now and then. My biggest takes is that the differences between these chatween these chatbots are of pinpoint and, since they’re all evolving rapidly, subject to change. Rather than settling on one of them, I recommend focusing on upping your own prompt-writing game. Describe what you’re trying to do in painful detail, and you’re more likely to get it. If your Instructions come off as excessive- Maybe even patronizing – You’re in the right zone.
AI is far better at general concepts Than Specific Facts – Compecially Arcane Ones. Earlier this year, I write an explainer about quantum computing and needed to brush up on some of the technology’s mind-bounding basics. Chatgpt Helped (Along with Planty of old-fashioned legwork But when I’m Searching for a discrete fact, I still don’t Trust llms to give me hallucination-free answers. For example, when our 1995 week, I asked chatgpt where the power button was on ibm’s thinkpad 701. It expounded at length on why ibm chose to put it to the raint of the display would be easy to reach. Which was a smart decision on the company’s part -extension was actually to the left of the keyboard, and a bit of a hassle to lock. Once Again, an llm had fabricated a simulacrum of a fact that was direction to tell from the real thing.
AI with Citations is vastly more useful than ai without it. Hallucinations are most likely when a chatbot depends entrely on its Hermetically Seled LLM to Gin Up Responses to Your Prompts. But these days, many ai tools can Quickly Hit the Web as Part of Their Answer-Generation Process. When they do that –nd include citations with links to what they found – I find the accuracy of their responses dramatically better. And I can always click the links to see where the information is originated.
Bringing your own data makes ai way better. The one tool i love unreservedly is Google’s Notebooklm. That’s trust it’s not trying to synthesize and summarize all human knowledge – a goal that frequent gets chatgpt and claude into trual –But on the documents I Choose to use. In my case, that’s usually transcripts of interviews i’ve conducted for an article. It scoors them at least as well as I could if left to my own devices, does it far more Quickly, and Never Introduce Errors. Other more general-purpose ai bots also let you upload your own files, an option well win exploring if you haven’s.
At Its Best, AI is better at drudgery than i am. Some of it, at least. Producing this newsletter economy week requires some truly tedious tweaking of html code, a process that took me about 15 minutes 15 minutes each time and was dies dies It was a great day when I realized claudewards swiftly and reliable edit the code. I plan to identify other boring-but-negaory aspects of my work and see if ai might lend a hand.
AI is not better than I am at the parts of my job that i love. God Plugged in Newsletter I’ve Alredy Finished Writing. Then I ask it to generate its own version, at the same length. Once in a while, i’m started by how close these llms come to producing in the same zip code as my effort, at least in terms of overching approach and takeaway. Ultimately, thought, they always read like they were written on autopilot – health they were! I practically Got into a verbal fistfight with chatgpt after it churned out Homework. It even got the company’s current ceo wrong.
In an odd way, my failed experiences with handing off the core of my work to ai are ressuring. I have no interest in avoiding the labor this newsletter representations. Having an llm write drafts of my articles for publication sounds about as appealing as going to disneyland and then paying someone else to ride space mountain on my behalf.
That’s a Bonus Lesson: Seeking out Ways Ai Can Make My Life Easier Has Been A Worthwhile Exercise. But it’s left me even more appreciative of the work I have no interest in automating –nd grateful
You’ve been reading Plugged in, fast company‘S Weekly Tech Newsletter from Me, Global Technology Editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you – or if you reading it on fastcompany.com – You can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourSelf every friday. I love hearing from you: ping me at [email protected] with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on bluesky, mastodon, and threads, and you can follow Plugged in on Flipboard,
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