Things are about to move very fast

Imagine going into a coma on June 28, 2007.

15 years go by and you wake up in January 2023.

You wake up in your hospital bed to find yourself surrounded by family members. They don’t even notice you wake up because they are all staring at a glowing rectangular object in their hands. You see your brother laugh at something on his rectangle; your dad furrow his brow in anger at something on his.

Through the hospital room window, you see the nurses behind the desk staring at a similar rectangle in their hands. One nurse props the rectangle on a counter, steps a few paces away, and begins dancing.

You wonder how long you were out.

Something very strange has happened.

Something stranger is coming.

The iPhone and the Smartphone Revolution

On June 29, 2007, the first iPhone was released.

This ushered in an era of instant communication at all times from all places. The ability to summon cars. A photo and video camera and a voice recorder always ready in a pocket. A translator, GPS, and calculator. A mobile arcade. And much, much more.

It didn’t happen all at once. But 15 years is not a very long time.

The smartphone has radically shifted our lifestyle and habits in less than half of my lifetime.

The Next Big Revolution

November 30, 2022, the day ChatGPT was released to the public, will go down in history as the beginning of a new revolution as significant as the smartphone.

Less than two months in and we are seeing an explosion of creativity, new companies created, and jobs rendered obsolete.

Within the next few years, almost every ad you see, movie you watch, song you listen to, book you read, and car you ride in will be augmented by AI.

I’m Like A Kid on Christmas Morning

I love this moment. Every day is so exciting. I want to share some of the best tools I’ve found in the AI space:

1. ChatGPT: If you’re not already using it, what are you doing? I did another article with a few pointers on getting signed up and how to start using it.

2. Tesla: The first time I drove a Tesla and experienced self-driving, it fundamentally changed my perspective on driving. It made operating a vehicle manually seem like an unnecessary and outdated task, like milking a cow by hand instead of buying milk from the grocery store. Tesla AI has the benefit of having learned from millions of miles of experience, it never gets tired, drunk, or angry, and it doesn’t have medical emergenices (heart attack, stroke, etc) on the road.

3. Dall-E: Give it a text prompt like “a macro 35mm photograph of two mice in Hawaii, they're each wearing tiny swimsuits and are carrying tiny surf boards, digital art” and it will produce this:

4. Meta AI Make-A-Video: Similar to Dall-E, but for video. Not accessible by the public as of January 26, 2023 but this is going to be very cool.

5. Jasper: Jasper writes copy. Anecdotally, my friends who are in digital marketing use this and say the only reason it hasn’t replaced them yet is because more people don’t know about it. In the long term, it will drive the cost of marketing signifcantly down.

6. Jobscan: This one scans your resume and the job description you are applying for. It gives you feedback on how to improve your resume and how well you fit the job.

7. Descript [affiliate link]: Video and audio editing software. Has significantly improved my podcast and YouTube channel. Can remove background noises to sound like you’re in a studio with the click of a button. Auto balance audio levels between different sound tracks. And automatically removes filler words (‘um’, ‘so’, ‘and’, ‘you know’, etc.) and pauses. The coolest thing is that it’s as easy as editing a PowerPoint. It uses ‘script-based’ editing versus traditional timeline-based editing.

8. Hemingway: Checks your writing for clarity and readability. Tells you when you have too many adjectives in a sentence, passive voice, or something is unclear.

9. DeepL: A highly-accurate translator for large documents. I translated my Mexican lease contract using this and it did so perfectly. Much better than Google Translate or some of the other tools I have used.

10. Looka: Generates a logo and brand for your business.

11. Nash: Allows you to voice-chat in 7 different languages. For example, I can set the input language as English and the output as Spanish. When I said to it, “Tell me something that you want people to know about you” it responded “Me gusta enseñar idiomas porque me permite conectar con personas de diferentes lugares. Me encanta ver cómo mejoran con mi ayuda” both verbally and written. Great for practicing a language.

12. Pictory: Video editing/generation. Allows you to upload an audio file and it will create a video using stock footage that goes along with whatever topic you are speaking about. For example, if you are talking about how Thai food is your favorite, it will generate video of Thai dishes to play while you’re discussing it. Does a lot more than this but that is the basic function.

13. DoNotPay: Lawyers are another profession with a limited time horizon. This service will auto-fight parking tickets, generate legal contracts, cancel your cable subscription, handle your divorce, and much more. I have heard of several people saving tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees by using this.

There are hundreds of other AI tools out there and more being created every day but this is a good list to get you started.

The Killer App

For any technology to be mainstream, it needs to have a “killer app.” An application or functionality that makes it so powerful society has no choice but to adopt it.

For the PC, it was spreadsheets. For the internet, it was the web browser. For the iPhone, it was apps and data-connectivity.

For ChatGPT, the killer application will be when it’s database is connected to the internet.

Currently, it runs off of a static dataset that only goes up through 2021. Once it is “live,” I predict it’s only a matter of time before it replaces a significant amount of our online searches, customer service interactions, and content generation.

Things are about to move very fast.