I've been wanting to write about AI for a while
Heck, I even had a draft ready after reading some cool posts by @riverflows. I never finished it as my focus got shifted to another side of AI. Thankfully, @finguru created this community called "The Mindful AI" making it interesting again for me to discover the options offered by ChatGTP.
Let's be very clear here though, I will not use ChatGTP for my Hive content in terms of letting it write my posts for me, I'd not risk my reputation for a few extra bucks. But I do see the huge potential of using the AI tools to learn new skills as well as roll out business ideas that I've been stuck on for a while simply because I'm lost on where to start rolling things out and making a solid step-by-step plan for it. AI has been great for that!
My boyfriend was the one that got me excited
To start exploring the options offered by ChatGTP. He has been using it as an assistant to get a decent plan working on documentation for the business which was new to him until last year. He was thrown in the deep at the time to make sure that year the Audit for certification would go smoothly while he had no clue what he was doing. It took him a lot of time and effort to grab his head around this stuff even a bit and I remember the frustration some days as if it happened yesterday. I was quite proud that he managed to get the company to pass the audit and that was it for the year.
This year he thought he'd be smarter and ask AI for assistance to roll out a decent plan as some things had changed over the year and he wasn't sure how these things would affect everything. Of course, he learned a lot by doing what he did the year before but he's always very keen on having the correct documentation and improving things where possible. He started asking questions (without using sensitive customer data of course) to ChatGTP and he was thrilled seeing how this would make everything so much easier. By reading the rolled-out plans, the advised documentation needed etc, he learned a lot and it was a much smoother learning curve compared to figuring it all out by himself. I kept hearing him being thrilled constantly about many things that I knew I had to start exploring on how to use AI to my advantage as well.
I started to think about options
For example, I've been exploring the option of how to use Amazon affiliate marketing and have postponed publishing content on the items I ordered there until I'm ready to apply for the program. I read that the content should be not older than 2 months, so I'm trying to get ready to have some content available for when I think I meet the requirements. I asked ChatGTP (the free version) for assistance to make a plan and took notes on that. I was happy with the help but clearly, I did not understand it fully.
Then I figured, I might ask help for with the t-shirt line I'm creating to sell on Bonfire. So far I have a few designs ready, but only published my daughter's art design on one of them to try out the launch procedure. I thought maybe AI can help me with a few ideas for my designs but I bumped into the problem that it's all outdated data if you ask something like "Most sold quotes on t-shirts". So I will probably not reach out for assistance from ChatGTP until I have the first line ready to be launched, to start the marketing campaign. I think for that reason, the assistance can be very valuable.
So far I didn't have much help but I know this is because I didn't ask the right questions, I don't know what I want from ChatGTP yet so I can't ask the needed questions yet. I have some learning to do here, which is fine because now at least my interest is there.
ChatGTP Plus
My boyfriend aimed for the option to take a ChatGTP Plus membership as he feels for him alone it will be useful too, he said that with all the ideas I have, he is sure that I can utilize AI to get things rolling and make sure these plans will be realized. I knew he was probably right because now only more ideas are added instead of staying focussed to get things out there. It's a waste of ideas and I'd like to change that. We bought ChatGTP Plus last week and I was unsure where to start, haha.
I have a few unfinished ebook ideas that have plenty of writing time in them already but nothing ready to be published while selling ebooks on Amazon has been on my list for several years now. I decided to ask AI how to start selling and get a step-by-step plan. I know you can find this info online but often information is cluttered with other things I don't need to know now, so AI saved me some time. I also asked AI about some chapter ideas to finish the book, I will not share this here as the plan is to finish it and publish it, getting things into motion, you see.
Simple usage: Improving a faulty recipe
A while ago, I wanted to make a coffee cake and pulled the recipe from the Lorespresso website. When I was collecting the ingredients, something felt off and I couldn't grab my head around it yet so I just followed the ingredient list and instructions exactly until I knew something like baking powder or baking soda must be missing. But I don't know exactly which one does what as I'm one to just follow baking instructions usually. Today I felt like improving the recipe and having another try baking this cake as it had potential for sure!
I copied the ingredients in Spanish, but why translate it if ChatGTP-4 can do it for you, saves me some time. This was the answer:
I was about to copy the instructions but discovered that these were not even needed as ChatGTP4 added them without me asking:
I wasn't sure about the 4 eggs so I asked this as well. I will probably add 3 first and then find out how thick or thin the batter is before deciding on the perfect number of eggs.
This made sense partially besides I never baked a cake in my life within only 35 minutes, I don't even think 45 has ever happened. I have seen instructions saying 45-60 minutes before but never starting at 35 to 45 only. Our current oven needs a much higher baking temperature for my banana bread recipe which I baked at much lower temperatures in our old home many times. I assume that I will need to adjust the temperature here as well to make it a perfect cake using our oven.
I can't wait until I learn more about the usage of ChatGTP4
So far I've been asking quite simple straightforward questions about step-by-step plans and this improved recipe. It's nice not to have to google and ask AI instead, I can then ask more questions if needed and see if it makes sense. To me, this recipe improvement confirmed what I thought, without me having to read about it online to learn more about missing ingredients and what they do to the cake.
I read you can add a browser extension (or can add it in the future, not sure) for real-time data being processed when generating the answers. This sounds cool but I think I will refrain from going there now until I understand this all a bit better.
Learning became much easier
I see HUGE potential for people like myself who learn by doing things rather than reading endless books with information. I'm a much faster learner when I see how something is done over reading it the old-school way. I can see how I can learn a bit more about coding in the future simply by seeing how ChatGTP answers my questions and asking more questions to explain what I see over watching tutorials online.
Also, something that bothered me greatly in the past was tons of students in the same class/course and then being the ones that understand all material discussed, having to sit there endlessly hearing the same questions being asked over and over again by other students. I got bored and felt like I was wasting precious time. This whole nu era of AI can be a great tool for those active learners to keep their own pace instead of being slowed down by others. Time is precious.
What have you been using AI tools for so far? Want to share it in a comment?
This is a fully original article written by myself, the only thing I used the assistance of AI for is included in screenshots and contains the information about a recipe I wanted to improve. The header image is created with the help of Canva pro (a paid subscription.)