
That ad headline you scrolled by or that sales email you received might have been written in part by an AI. Soon, just about everything we see and hear might have been partially penned by an AI. Although we may be far from AI independently creating complex creative works like a book or a movie, we’re just around the corner from AI becoming an instrument that virtually every creator uses.

## Thought \#1: We're already using AI

**Inspiration:** I don’t have hard numbers on this but I suspect people are getting more information not through human curated bundles of paper but rather algorithmically compiled feeds. Whenever we scroll through these feeds, our brains are loaded with ideas that percolate through our minds until we find the time to compose a thought. 

**Fact Finding:** It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, it seems like the number one research tool everyone reaches for is Google (or maybe Bing, you do you). The thing about search engines is that no one person really know how they work. These search engines are very much a black box of AI magic yet we trust them to find us information that we readily assemble into something worth publishing.

**Proofreading:** AI already powers many spell checking, plagiarism detectors, and grammar tools. Perhaps one of the most telling sign of how reliant people are on AI is that many Chinese natives have forgotten how to write Chinese characters. Since most writing is done through typing phonetic pinyin and choosing the characters to commit on screen, Chinese natives are losing the ability to write.

## Thought\#2: How generative AI can improve upon content production

**Customized inspiration:** This is possible because you can use GPT-3 within your text editor so it understands the exact context of the piece you’re creating. This way creators break through creative block by soliciting a few ideas from an AI whenever they’re stuck.

**Increased output:** AI can dramatically reduce the time it takes to write since AI is no longer an inaccessible feature of a search engine or social feed but now just an API call away. This means developers can embed AI directly into a document editor or a web app. Skipping the context switch of jumping into another tool will free up more time for creators.

**Improved reader experience:** While it’s easy to A/B test copy or a landing page, it’s hard to A/B test a blog post or other long-form content. But with AI tools today we can ask for a blog post and even the header image of that blog post to be adapted many times. Rather pick a canonical version of a story, it’s even possible to serve a personalized blog post to every visitor if we have context clues about what they like. Some might enjoy humor in their news, others may not.

## Thought\#3 and beyond

I've continued my writing about AI on [All the AI](https://insights.alltheai.com), a newsletter dedicated to my generative AI obsession. Check it out to hear my takes on everything from [how AI will affect Google and search](https://insights.alltheai.com/p/how-ai-can-loosen-googles-grip-on) to [principles for building with AI](https://insights.alltheai.com/p/ai-builders-handbook-part-1).

Early thoughts on what the boom in AI tools means for content.

AI Tools and Content Production


Climate anxiety is growing and it can feel hopeless as an individual trying to turn a global tide. This is especially true if you’re like me and don’t have the skills to improve electric cars or develop renewable energy. So although we can’t focus on fixing carbon emissions, we can focus on getting the most out of carbon emissions. Borrowing the business concept of return on investment, I suggest we take a hard look at our return on carbon footprint.

Finding enjoyment and utility out of pollution may sound outrageous. I mean, shouldn’t we feel guilty whenever we hop in a car or catch a flight? I know Google Flights is trying to guilt trip us by showing the kilograms of carbon with each flight.

<img
alt="Google Flights Screenshot"
src="/google-flights.png"
width={608}
height={348}
className="w-full"
/>

But we should remind ourselves that the reason for all this pollution is for us to live a good life. It's incredibly hard for most individuals to affect change in the mix of our energy inputs as those decisions are made at a government and industry level. So instead of focusing on the inputs, I'd argue we should instead be focusing on our mileage. We should make sure that we maximize the life outcomes of pollution. We should optimize for leading happy and productive lives so that all the pollution that powers our society has not gone to waste. This is especially true if you live in an industrialized country like the US or Canada where your carbon footprint is massive relative to the average person in the world.

Now one of the biggest thing that you can control in life that can affect your happiness and productivity is your job. At this point I want to introduce the concept of a bullshit job. Anthropologist David Graeber describes bullshit jobs as

> …jobs which even the person doing the job can’t really justify the existence of, but they have to pretend that there’s some reason for it to exist.

Graeber’s categorization of bullshit jobs include:

> Flunkies, who serve to make their superiors feel important.
>
> Goons, who act to harm or deceive others on behalf of their employer.
>
> Duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently.
>
> Box tickers, who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not.
>
> Taskmasters, who create extra work for those who do not need it.

I like to believe that most people in industrialized countries and white-collar jobs don’t have bullshit jobs but I accept the reality that most jobs do come with some bullshit. This is my call to action for you. Consider switching jobs if you think your current job is bullshit or find the bullshit parts of your job and eliminate it. While you can’t control the carbon inputs of your life very easily, you can control the by products of all that pollution. Minimize the bullshit in your job because the Earth shouldn’t suffer for pointless meetings, vanity projects, and busywork.


Make the most out of your carbon footprint.

Don't let your pollution go to waste.

Seven years ago, I came home as a visitor for the first time instead of a resident. I can still remember exactly of how I felt all those years back, fresh off my first semester of university. I was feeling a little sad. As an impressionable first year student, all I wanted was to join a business club at school which felt like the only sure fire path to a good business career. I ended up applying for just about half the clubs that were available and after several rounds of interview I only got a bunch of no's.

I've never been a competitive person. I actually have a tendency to shy away from competition. After my club hiring experience, I looked for other things to do with my time. I didn't like the feeling of being out-competed so I looked to do something that nobody else was doing at business school. Taking inspiration from some of my high school friends who were studying computer science, I began coding in my spare time. It was that 2014 winter break when my interest in digital products really took hold. I spent my time at home publishing my first web project, a Chrome extension. The extension still has 200+ users and a 3/5 rating on the Chrome web store which is extremely generous to say the least. Building the extension set in motion a quiet confidence in me and a love of crafting products.

This winter I'll be building another small web project. Perhaps this one will top that 3/5 rating. Stay tuned.


Visiting home, avoiding competition, and building web projects.

Hacking from home

<small>***Aside:** This title is a reference to Stanely Kubrick's naming of the 1964 film, 'Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb', which itself is a play on Dale Carnegie's book, 'How to Stop Worrying and Start Living'.*</small>

Marketing has a bad rep with non-marketers. I found this to be especially true when I was learning marketing in business school. As I applied frameworks to case studies and created slides to promote a fictional humane mouse trap for 20% of my grade, the two words that I most strongly associated with marketing were *bullshit* and *fluffy*. In short, I thought marketing was everything but humane.

This perception stayed with me throughout my university years and into my first full-time job. It's hard to think otherwise when the first thing you see if you look up "marketing" are a bunch of impersonal words. 

> Marketing is the process of intentionally stimulating demand for and purchases of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes ... [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing)

My mind only started to change when I started doing more marketing myself. I've come to appreciate marketing as something that's thoughtful and analytical rather than bullshit and fluffy.

Marketing is thoughtful in the same way that you're thoughtful when you make a great recommendation for a friend. The only difference is that you're making recommendations at scale for a big group rather than one person. When recommending a yummy restaurant, a thrilling movie, or a scenic trail for a friend, you must take into consideration their tastes and preferences. You might think about what's accessible to them, which neighbourhoods they enjoy, and what their budget is. When you market, you have to do the same. Marketing is being thoughtful.

Marketing also extends beyond soft skills and often requires the same level of rigour investigative journalists use to break watershed stories and astrophysicist use to map the stars in the universe. It's impossible to listen intently to a million different voices so you might find yourself carefully choosing a focus group and spending hours preparing interview questions. From there, you might survey the market and summarize a sea of data points into a handful of insights. To do this well, you can arm yourself with Python scripts, SQL queries, and more. Marketing is being analytical.

If you find yourself thinking that *marketing* is a dirty word like I did, just know that marketing does matter and it takes a lot of heart and brains to do it well.


Marketing or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Craft


I've never felt more betrayed by my food choices than about a month ago when I learned that [oat milk is likely bad for you](https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/is-oatly-healthy). 

Despite years of continuously updating my habits I'm far from confident that I have my food choices down. And it's not just eating that saps my willpower, it's being mindful about sleep, exercise, and mental health. You'd think that it'd be easy to be healthy in modern times with all our products, services, and information. How could I not find the right diet after reading ['Which One of These 100 Diets Could Help You Lose Weight?'](https://parade.com/986848/nancy_henderson/types-of-diets/)? Why wouldn't I prioritize sleep after reading ['Why We Sleep'](https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316)? Instead I'm here feeling anxious about all the things I should be doing and now I'm seriously considering downloading a meditation app to calm me down.

It seems like we're swimming upstream when it comes to making healthy choices. Whether it's the [government backed food pyramid](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rebuilding-the-food-pyramid/) misleading us or the [billions spent on marketing junk food](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-prevention/food-environment/food-marketing-and-labeling-and-obesity-prevention/), designing a healthy lifestyle has never been harder. I'm here to remind us that it is not our fault. Let's acknowledge that the most fundamental parts of life have been complicated by modern living. We're fish out of water because although our mind and bodies were slow to change over the last 5,000 years, our environment certainly has. In this time civilization has poisoned our land, processed our foods, and made us more sedentary. We have long moved away from our ancestor's world where hunter & gatherer lifestyles were healthy by default, so don't fret if you can't make all the right health choices.



Unhealthy by default


When I find it hard to forgive myself for all the past decisions gone awry, I remind myself that every decision I've made was the correct one at the time.

Consider this, when you make a decision you must gather facts and weigh your options using the mental model embedded in your head. After letting all these inputs stew together with your emotional state of mind, you make a choice. As long as you were well intentioned, you can rest knowing you did the best you could because there's no way to retroactively change the ingredients that have gone into a decision that's already made. In other words, you're never wrong.

All past decisions made sense at the time.

You're never wrong

In 2021 I want to create more so here's a post.