You Ask, I Answer: Why Don’t I Use Generative AI More?

In today's episode, let's talk about a question that someone asked me. Um, why I don't use generative AI more in my stuff. If you look on LinkedIn, for example, or in my newsletter, or even on my YouTube channel here, um, you'll notice this there's not too many AI generated images or sounds, uh, no AI generated words. And it seems, or this person pointed out, it seems really weird that I'm on keynote stages talking about the benefits of generative AI, but I'm not walking the talk. I'm not, I'm not doing the thing.

Why is that? Well, there's three reasons. Um, number one, it's not as much fun. When we talk about generative AI and the use of generative AI, one of the best use cases for is stuff that isn't fun. Uh, in fact, we have an entire framework, uh, the Trust Insights Trips Framework, uh, which you can get a copy of for free.

It's a PDF, no form fill required. Go to TrustInsights.ai slash trips and you can get a copy of it. It stands for uh five things: time, repetitiveness, importance, pleasantness, and sufficient data. So tasks that take more time are a better candidate for AI, because time is valuable. Tasks that are repetitive, good candidate for AI.

Because the more repetitive it is, the easier it is for a machine to do. Tasks that are important, uh, the less important a task is, the better, uh, because it means less human review. If you have a task that requires uh high risk, like legal or financial or healthcare, you've got to have human review, and possibly extensive human review. Number four is the important for pleasantness. How much do you enjoy the task?

And then fifth is sufficient data. You know, you can you have enough examples that a machine can copy that task. Um when I'm doing stuff on social networks or when I'm doing stuff in on YouTube on my channel here, or whatever, it's fun. It's fun. I enjoy uh, you know, when I'm putting together LinkedIn posts, trying to come up with that that uh what's it called?

LinkedIn uh broetry, right? That that that particular writing style that's unique to LinkedIn. Um when I'm looking for images for my posts, I don't use AI for that because I've got something like 400,000 images in my Google Photos account. I take photos all the time. I enjoy it.

I enjoy going through my old photos and finding stuff, and I find that very pleasant. I genuinely enjoy writing, it's it's a lot of fun. And so in terms of the trips framework, handing that stuff over to a machine would be less fun. It just wouldn't be as enjoyable. One of the things I think is really important to talk about is that you are not obligated to stop doing the things you enjoy just because a machine can do it more efficiently, not as an individual.

Now, your company might have different ideas, but certainly in your personal life, what you put on your personal social media channels and things, do what you enjoy. If you if you enjoy writing on LinkedIn, if you enjoy um posting uh reels on Instagram, if you enjoy making TikToks, don't stop doing that. Don't hand off to machine just because somebody says you should. If you enjoy it, do it, because that's that's the whole point. Um reason number one.

Reason number two is with a lot of AI stuff, it's not quite me. You know, we're connected on different channels. You're you're obviously watching this on YouTube or on my websites. We're connected because presumably you wanted to connect with me, right? The human.

If if you wanted to connect with an AI instead, sorry, not yet. Um it's coming soon, but not yet. And nothing to me is more me than my writing, my photos, my video, uh, my voice, etc. And that's distinctive. That is distinctive.

You know when you're looking at AI generated content. You it has a certain look to it. Even the very best models, there's just something slightly off. You know, when you're hearing an AI generated voice, it's it's close, but it's not quite right yet. Now, will it get there?

Yes, of course. Uh, because that's it's just prediction, and you improve predictions, you improve accuracy over time, but it's not quite there yet. And when everyone else is using the exact same tools, the exact same styles, and then and then not providing their own data, you get kind of a sea of sameness on LinkedIn or threads or wherever. And that doesn't stand out. And if you're doing this stuff professionally for marketing purposes, not standing out is kind of bad, right?

Standing out is all you know, marketing is all about differentiation, attention is all about what's different. That's literally how our brains process. Our brains look at a scene and go, what's different here? What stands out? If you want to stand out, the best, easiest way to do that is through the use of uh something that's distinctive, that's you, because machines can copy a lot of the aspects of you, they can't copy you exactly, and that sets you apart.

Should you be using AI to create content for your blog or YouTube or social network, whatever? If you don't enjoy that stuff, sure. Um, you should absolutely use AI as much as possible for any given unpleasant task. But if you genuinely enjoy having conversations with people, then don't give that up. And the third reason to use AI is if it does something you can't do, it does something you can't do.

I cannot write music. I can't play music, I can't write music, it is not my thing. I am I am musically illiterate. I don't know what you would call that. Um, but I I have very hard times even just doing things like discriminating tones.

A friend of mine sent me this this wizard uh for um for for helping you know say judge how you could have how well you can discriminate on different notes, and I just terribly on it. So when I have a tool like Suno, for example, or Udio or uh any of these these AI music generation tools, that to me is a great use case for me to be able to create something that's pretty okay, not great, not amazing, not Grammy winning, but it's pretty okay, but it's pretty okay, which is way better than something I could do. I would create something pretty terrible, and so there's a very clear use case there. If I'm bad at it, I should not be doing it. I should instead let a machine do it and get a pretty okay result.

And again, is it going to beat out a highly competent human? No. Will it beat out an incompetent human? Absolutely. And so that's a great third use case for how to use this stuff.

But that's you know, that that's sort of the the the bench test, right? Should you use should you be using AI for your stuff? Well, it depends on whether you enjoy it. Uh it depends on whether you need the distinctiveness that being uniquely you has, and whether or not that you can do the thing that you're trying to do or you feel comfortable doing. There are, for example, a lot of people who feel uncomfortable on camera, and an AI generated avatar might be just the thing for them.

There are a lot of people who, for good or ill, don't like the sound of their voice, but they can write and create content. So is it bad for them to have a machine generate the voice part of a creative project? No, because they don't enjoy it. And there are tons of tools that can create realistic sounding voices to read aloud your written content. There's nothing wrong with that.

So use those three factors to determine whether or not you should be using AI for any given content creation aspect. I think it's worth reminding remembering that you don't have to use AI. You don't have to use it for everything. You should try it for everything to see what it's good at, and then hand off the stuff that you don't enjoy, the stuff that you're not good at, the stuff that isn't worth your time. That is the best use case for it.

Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next time. If you enjoyed this video, please hit the like button. Subscribe to my channel if you haven't already. And if you want to know when new videos are available, hit the bell button to be notified as soon as new content is live.