I’ve written a couple of posts in the past year about Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). I’ve taken a couple of classes about it too. Last week I met a guy at the gym who sells enterprise A.I. for IBM. We’ve all heard about it in some form, and everyone seems to have a different opinion about it… some embrace it as another evolutionary step in the human progression, others see it as an Orwellian monster. I’m still figuring that out. What I can say today with certainty it’s fast, it’s big, and it isn’t going away.
I made a decision this week about A.I. I decided that I’d better start learning about it. How it can help me, how it can hurt me, how afraid I should be. After I made that decision I also made a deal with my new real estate partner. I call it 20 X 20.
The basic idea is that we’re blocking 20 minutes a day for 20 days straight to sit down, shut off all of the distractions, and learn about A.I. I have no idea where it will take us, but what I do know is that when you can get yourself into the groove of doing something every day, you get way better at it. Going to the gym, writing, taking a video, whatever. This is because human learning happens when you build neuropathways in your brain. Rote learning and repetition are the road to enlightenment, learning, and maybe even salvation. But it starts with a time-block commitment, and that’s the 20 X 20.
If you do the basic math of the 20 X 20, that’s just about a 7-hour commitment to learn about something that everyone seems to think is going to change everything. To me that seems like a pretty smart investment. I signed up for the $20 a month ChatGPT Pro account, and today I learned about these crazy video editing tools that can do the most amazing things I never would have even thought of – and all of it lickety split. I have no idea what’s in store for us and the 20 X 20, but there will probably be a post or two about it.
I will leave you with this: every single one of us needs to take a minute and think about this A.I. thing and how it will affect all of us. Don’t worry, your favorite (or unfavorite) presidential candidate will still be the innocent victim going to trial, or just stumbling down Air Force 1 and falling asleep at the next State dinner. But when this A.I. thing gets traction it’s going to be absorbed quickly and parabolically. If we as humans know nothing else, we know that it’s better to eat the hamburger than to have the hamburger eat you.
Good luck and have a good week.
Joe Still
2023.09.17
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“I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing.”
– Socrates