AI 5 - MickMel

The first bit of AI with my notes

March 17, 2023 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 4 minutes

There are a lot of things coming with AI that I’m very excited about, and some that I’m dreading (like the deluge of AI-generated content we’re soon to face).

One that I’m excited about in particular is the ability to use AI to help sort through my notes. My dream setup, in the future, is to have an AI system that can read my notes, emails, and everything in Google Drive, and then I can just query against it. I’m not sure how that’ll actually work, but someone will invent a tool that does it, and we’ll all learn from that.

When I moved all of my notes back into Obsidian earlier this year, part of the reason was for the ease of AI to be able to process my notes when the time comes. Here is part of what I said:

While Tana or any other system could certainly integrate a degree of AI, it feels to me like being able to point an AI system at a folder on my computer that is full of plain text would be a much easier task than building a tool to index a complex system like Tana or Roam Research. Whether AI tools come to notes anytime soon, plain text is much more future-proofed than having notes buried in a proprietary system.

Well, that time is now.

Smart Connections for Obsidian

The “Smart Connections” plugin for Obsidian has been around for a little while, and it’s been fine, but they recently added support for ChatGPT as a way for you to talk to a chatbot about your own notes! It’s very imperfect, but a fun little start.

It takes a bit of work to set up, but isn’t too bad. You also have to pay for access to use the OpenAI API to connect to your site, as it needs to feed all of your notes into your private chatbot, and OpenAI charges for that. It’s most expensive at the beginning when you load all of your notes, and then it’s just nominal charges for keeping things updated. For me, it loaded 12,740 notes (likely far more than you have in Obsidian) and cost a total of $1.44 for that. Ongoing costs will be even lower, so that’s excellent.

Examples

As neat as all of this is, the key is to get some value out of it. My notes are rather well-organized, so can a chatbot answer questions faster than I can just look them up? If I phrase things correctly, it certainly can. Here are a few examples:

Correct! That’s when I wrote the post, and I think it was the only one (until now).

This one was interesting. Those two are completely accurate, but it missed a few others and I don’t know why. All of them were formatted the same way, so I don’t know why it picked up some and missed others.

Perfect! That’s exactly right. Now, because this tool is conversational, I respond to that and it will keep up:

Those weren’t my personal notes on the book, just info about the book in general, but it’s neat that it was to interpret “the first one” to mean “The Business of Expertise” and then respond accordingly.

Perfect.

This gets super interesting when you realize that this tool can search your notes, of course, but also the ChatGPT database at large. According to the plugin author:

To trigger a search of your notes, you must use a self-referential pronoun
ex. I, me, my, mine, we, us, our, ours

This means I can search for similar things in different ways. For example, the way I worded this first one pulled top quotes from the internet:

However, if I say “in my notes” (thus including a self-referential pronoun), it only searches through my items:

That might be the best part of this. I can keep this window open all day and search for whatever I want, including the data from my notes.

Privacy

The main drawback to this is likely privacy. That’s not to say that this is insecure in any way, but a core tenant of Obsidian is privacy, in that (by default) your notes stay local on your computer and are very safe. In my case, I already use their “sync” app to copy my notes across devices, and now this is also sending a copy of them to OpenAI. The way they do it is quite secure (your notes go directly there and aren’t stored elsewhere in the interim), but it’s still creating a place for hackers to potentially get in.

For me, I’m ok with that risk. I do it all the time with things like Gmail and Google Docs, and this is a similar level of concern. My notes contain no private data, and someone would frankly be kind of bored to read about the meetings I’ve been in and the books I’m reading. It’s still a risk to consider, though.

If nothing else, I encourage you to read Brian’s full post about this to see how it works, and know that the future is full of things that will take this to heights that I can’t even imagine.

AI is going to kill SEO

February 25, 2023 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

It may take quite a while, but peak SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is behind us, and the relevance of it will only go down from here. That’s not to say that SEO isn’t important, as it still can be a major source of traffic for many sites, but the value will slowly erode over the coming years.

There are two main reasons that:

Too much content

With users able to generate content on the fly, the amount of content on the internet is going to soar. While AI-written content isn’t perfect, and can often be detected by Google, both of those will fade soon. As AI-written content gets better, it’ll be harder to detect and avoid.

Fewer websites in search results

As the major search engines start implementing chat-like interfaces that give direct answers, there will be less of a need for users to click through to other websites for more information.

Wired put it this way: “web users spend more time with bots and less time clicking links, publishers could be cut off from sales of subscriptions, ads, and referrals.“

Related, the Verge said: “But if I ask the new Bing what the 10 best gaming TVs are, and it just makes me a list, why should I, the user, then click on the link to The Verge, which has another list of the 10 best gaming TVs?”

SO instead of SEO

As shared by Search Engine Land, perhaps it’s time we stop talking about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and just talk about SO (Search Optimization). In particular, the search features on most social networks are becoming more and more robust, so positioning your content to show up in those search results is becoming increasingly valuable.

It’s not time to freak out yet, as traditional SEO is still very strong and will be for a while, but it’s time to start looking at what’s next. As always, the more you can position yourself so that people search for you instead of your service (as in, someone searching for “GreenMellen” instead of “website development”), the better off you’ll be through anything that comes next.

How much will AI change our world?

February 20, 2023 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

It’s the question on everyone’s mind these days — how much is AI going to shift everything in the coming years? No one knows the answer, but there are lots of people putting out their guesses.

One of those is Tom Scott, and well-known and trusted YouTuber, who recently released a video with his take on things. In short, he thinks that the release of ChatGPT could be similar to the release of Napster back in 1999. While Napster is long gone, it ushered in an entirely new internet, and ChatGPT could be the same. Here is Tom’s take on things:

Another great video is from the guys at Linus Tech Tips, as they play with the new AI integration in Bing and are simply blown away. It’s a really long video, but if you start around the 43 minute mark (which the video below should do), it’s worth watching for a few minutes.

Perhaps more interesting is to see how laws and regulations adapt to this. If you remember the time of Napster, it was chaos, as record labels and governments scrambled to keep up. At this point, regulations are still being sorted out around things from a decade ago (like Uber), so I have my doubts if laws will be able to stay current in the next few years.

All of this will be fascinating to see unfold. Related to Tom’s video, I tend to think we’re still at the bottom of the Sigmoid Curve that he shared, with tons of wild innovation to come in the next few years, though we’ll never know for sure until we can look back and see what happened.

Personal note-taking is going to change dramatically

January 14, 2023 by greenmellen 2 Comments

Reading Time: 2 minutes

My history of using different note-taking tools over the years is well-documented in this blog, including my recent move from Obsidian to Tana. While Tana has some great features and I really enjoy using it, it’s ultimately just a slightly better version of the tools that came before it and I may end up moving back to Obsidian. Those kinds of changes may become irrelevant in the future, as we’re on the verge of some huge changes in the world of notes.

I’ve talked about ChatGPT before, and I encourage you to play around with it when you have some time. It’s a mind-blowing tool, but it’s just a tiny scrap of what’s coming. Using tools like that to reference general data is great, but what if I could have it index all of my notes and provide answers from there?

Dan Shipper recently wrote a fantastic post about this, and I’ll share some of his thoughts:

A better way to unlock the value in your old notes is to use intelligence to surface the right note, at the right time, and in the right format for you to use it most effectively. When you have intelligence at your disposal, you don’t need to organize.

That’s something I try to do with my notes, but it’s a whole different world. With mine, I need to manually create references and the follow the paths. With AI, I could simply have it bring up the information that I need immediately.

Think about starting a project—maybe you’re writing an article about a new topic—and having an LLM automatically write and present to you a report outlining key quotes and ideas from books you’ve read that are relevant to the article you’re writing.

Again, this is something I’m trying to do by hand, and it works fairly well, but doing what Dan describes there is on a whole different level.

At the conclusion, Dan simply says: “In the future, notes won’t be organized by us—they’ll be organized for us.“

Heyday

The closest example I can find today is heyday.xyz. It can pull your data from a ton of sources, including email, Slack, Dropbox, Notion, etc and help make sense of it all. In theory, they could continue to expand their sources and slowly integrate AI and start to become this kind of solution.

Really, that’s the main problem for now. Tools like ChatGPT are amazing, but their content comes from the internet at large, and not even anything from the past few years. I think the next step we’ll see is a real-time ChatGPT (“what’s happened in the Lions game right now?”), and eventually we’ll be able to pile our own content into our own system.

For now, I’m going to keep manicuring my notes to make them as helpful as possible, and hopefully one day I’ll be able to plug an AI into it to help me make even more sense of everything.

ChatGPT Everywhere

December 22, 2022 by greenmellen 2 Comments

Reading Time: 2 minutes

About a week ago I published a post talking about ChatGPT and what it might eventually bring. If you aren’t familiar with what ChatGPT is, I encourage you to check out that post first and then come back here.

In the week since then, usage of ChatGPT has continued to skyrocket, but now we’re also starting to see a handful of great applications taking advantage of that technology. Here are a few of my favorites so far, all of which are simple browser extensions for Chrome.

ChatGPT for Google

One of the big thoughts around ChatGPT is wondering how it will affect Google in the future. Why dig into a list of links from Google when you can just get the full answer from ChatGPT? It’s not there yet, but it’s not too far off either. For now, you can just do both at the same time with this extension! Once loaded, every time you run a search on Google, it’ll run the same query through ChatGPT and give you those results as well.

ChatGPT Chrome Extension

This one is a bit simpler. Rather than going to the ChatGPT site to run your queries, it just puts a little icon in your toolbar that will pop up a small window for quick searches.

Ellie AI

This is based on the core GPT-3 model (not on ChatGPT specifically), but it’s a neat integration with your email. As you reply to people, it will learn your style and you can have it write replies for you. I’m not sure I want to use that yet, but it could be helpful depending on your role. Also, while the above ChatGPT extensions are free (at least for now), Ellie only gives you two emails per day before you have to pay $20-30/mo for it.

Have you found any related extensions that are particularly useful?

Building in anticipation of new technology

December 20, 2022 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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As I’ve been migrating my notes over to Tana, I’ve noticed that I’m doing some things that Tana doesn’t support yet, but I’m hoping they will. For those that are curious, Tana doesn’t yet let you filter backlinks in a note, but I’m tagging all of my items with things like “#meeting” and “#call” in anticipation of being able to filter those out at some point in the future.

That feature may or may not ever arrive, but I’m preparing for it nonetheless.

AI video

I’ve also been having discussions with people about what the world will look like when you can create realistic AI-generated videos in seconds. The technology and the power isn’t quite there yet, but it’s coming.

When I talk with folks about this, we’re literally discussing a technology that doesn’t really exist yet and the implications it will have.

Electric Cars

Getting closer to home for some of you, I think electric cars kind of fit this view. While they’re a perfect fit for some people, for most they’re having to manage some workarounds for now (often involving range and charge times), in anticipation of advancing technologies in the coming years.

With electric cars, it’s like my post last year comparing them to early digital cameras. The cars are still imperfect, but the technology is improving rapidly and those that are using them now are helping to pave the future for the rest of us.

I don’t know if Tana will build the feature I need or not, nor do I know for sure what the implications of AI-generated video will be. For now, though, I enjoy speculating about them and trying to prepare for the possibility of each and we’ll see how things change in the next couple of years.

Did I write this?

December 16, 2022 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 4 minutes

AI technologies continue to improve, as I shared a few months ago with my post about AI-generated art.

Along with art, AI-generated text has been improving rapidly as well, and the new (currently free) ChatGPT has taken things to a whole new level.

In short, it’s a chatbot that can create unbelievably solid text about any subject you want. For example, I just typed: “give me 5 blog post ideas about SEO” and it returned:

“5 common SEO mistakes to avoid”
“The top 10 SEO tools for improving your search engine rankings”
“How to conduct keyword research for your SEO strategy”
“A beginner’s guide to on-page SEO”
“The role of backlinks in SEO and how to get them”

That’s pretty good! Let’s turn one of them into a post. I next said “write a 500 word blog post about 5 common SEO mistakes to avoid” and here is the first part of what it returned:

Optimizing your website for search engines is a crucial part of any online marketing strategy. While there are many factors that can affect your search engine rankings, one of the most important is your website’s search engine optimization (SEO). Unfortunately, many people make common mistakes when it comes to SEO, which can harm their website’s performance in the search results. Here are five common SEO mistakes to avoid:

1. Not conducting keyword research. Keyword research is an essential part of any SEO strategy, as it helps you identify the words and phrases that people are using to search for the products or services that you offer. Without conducting keyword research, you may end up targeting the wrong keywords, which can prevent your website from ranking highly in the search results.

(I’m not going to list all five, but it was really solid)

Next, I said “summarize that in a tweet“, and I got:

5 common #SEO mistakes to avoid: not conducting keyword research, ignoring on-page SEO, overusing keywords, neglecting backlinks, and not tracking results. Follow best practices to improve your website’s performance and drive relevant traffic. #onlinesuccess

It even included some relevant hashtags!

Any format you want

I’ve done a lot of other tests, and it’s remarkable. You can say “write a podcast script about x” and it will create a full conversation. You can say “write an email to steve to thank him for the sweater” and you’ll get a great email for Steve.

More troubling, you could say “write a 1000 word report on the life of Abraham Lincoln” and it will do just that. This is clearly going to be troublesome for schools, and I don’t know how you stop it. The text is all unique, so no plagiarism checker will find it. Perhaps schools will need more tests and fewer essays, if all essays are now suspect.

As another test, I just said “summarize the book “building a storybrand” in 250 words” and got this:

“Building a Storybrand” is a book by Donald Miller that offers a framework for businesses to create compelling marketing messages that connect with their customers. According to Miller, many businesses make the mistake of promoting themselves in their marketing materials, rather than focusing on the needs and desires of their customers. This can lead to confusion and inaction on the part of the customer.

Miller’s Storybrand framework offers a solution to this problem by helping businesses clarify their message and create a clear, compelling story that resonates with their audience. The framework consists of seven elements: the hero (the customer), the guide (the business), the plan (the solution offered by the business), the villain (the problem or pain point), the mentor (a trusted source of advice), the confrontation (the moment when the hero must choose between the plan and the villain), and the resolution (the outcome of the hero’s decision).

By using the Storybrand framework, businesses can create marketing materials that clearly communicate the value they offer to their customers and show how their products or services can help solve their customers’ problems. This can help increase customer engagement and drive more sales.

In addition to the Storybrand framework, the book also includes practical advice and real-world examples of companies that have successfully used the framework to improve their marketing efforts. Overall, “Building a Storybrand” is a valuable resource for businesses looking to create more effective marketing messages and connect with their customers on a deeper level.

It’s imperfect, but quite good. Scary good.

I don’t like it

As a writer, I don’t like it. I also know that my opinion doesn’t matter. It’s coming, and can’t be stopped. There will be a huge variety of these tools very soon, and there is no turning back.

Schools will hate it, Google will hate it, and that’s just the way it is.

I don’t have any solid answers, but I’m very curious to follow conversations about it in the coming months. Even though this is the best tool we’ve seen so far, it’s just the tip of the iceberg, as these tools will only get better from here.

For this site, it doesn’t matter much. I’m writing primarily for my own benefit here, so getting AI to help defeats my goals. What you see on here will all be coming out of my brain.

For most blogs, though, this could be huge. If you’re writing for the benefit of SEO, tools like this could be amazing to help you generate tons of content. Ethics will be a big part of future discussions around that, but things will be getting very interesting.

Try it out for yourself here and let me know what you think this will lead to in the coming years.