#101. Fuck me, fine, GPT-4 it is
and why I think Lateral Thinking is gonna save us all
Greetings to all future AI slaves (spoiler alert: that’s us!)
Hope you had a wonderful week while preparing for the unavoidable heat death of the universe.
Before I go on my rant, I want to introduce our next guest: Mehul Mandalia (check out his LinkedIn), a dear friend and currently Head of Platforms at Moving Walls.
Moving Walls might seem similar to Blindspot - and that’s because it is. We have a different approach, but we’re both dedicated to making the Digital Out of Home space better, which is why we work so well together.
I had 3 questions for Mehul:
What's the one business lesson you wish you learned earlier in your career?
Being a cynic or an optimist - which do you think serves you better in life and why?
What are you absolutely spectacular at? How did you figure out you're good at it?
Feel free to answer the questions yourself - they’ll most likely help you focus. You’ll see Mehul’s answers in the next newsletter, since I wanted to focus my rant around AI, a topic that’s taken over my newsfeed.
I spent the last couple of weeks on a real deep dive in the AI space, trying to understand some of the real ramifications for the AI craze that’s happening around us as we speak.
I won’t bore you with all the details, since I’m sure you’ve seen the most popular takes already online, such as: AI is gonna replace 90% of us, learn AI or you’re gonna be homeless within the next couple of years, this is it, the end of an era, here’s +1200 prompts to use in ChatGPT to figure out if your wife is cheating on you.
As you’ve hopefully learned to expect from me by now, I’ll be taking a lateral look at things.
On a final note, due to popular (5 very pushy people) demand, I’ve made it possible to become a paid subscriber to Lateral Thinking. Don’t ask me why. There are no extra benefits and all my content will be free as usual, I’ll just like you more if you subscribe I think? And I’ll take it as a sign to publish this more often. Maybe.
GEE PEE TEE END ME
I love ChatGPT. I picked up the paid subscription the moment it came out. I’ve used it for personal research and I’ve used it to save tons of time on work-related tasks.
I will keep using it since it’s definitely a useful tool.
However, I have issues with all the gurus that have popped up overnight.
Fortunately, I’ve already lived through at least half a dozen “LIFE CHANGING MOMENTS IN TECH”.
I say fortunately because that means I can instinctively tone down the screeching noises of influencers trying to grab attention on what is essentially “the current thing”. If you’re not familiar with THE CURRENT THING, read this.
The more you understand the way the current thing works, the more you can stand out from the crowd.
Fun fact, some influencers make a living out of saying “THE CURRENT THING” will change everything. Why does that work, you ask? Because if you say dumb stuff often enough, you’ll eventually be right with one statement and then ride that moment of truth into the sunset.
Now, people who’ve been around the block a few times know the world doesn’t work in black and white. Most things land somewhere between life-changing and irrelevant.
For those who’ve been in the tech space for at least a decade, I’d like to remind you of 2012-2013, when everyone and their mother was building chat bots that were supposed to eliminate all customer service roles.
Google Glass was supposed to turn us all into Terminators and the whole internet was supposed to shift to augmented reality.
VR was the next life changing tech that was supposed to trap us all in something similar to the last scenes in WALL-E (yes, I know it’s technically AR, but you get the idea).
Self driving cars were supposed to put all drivers out of a job.
Classic TVs were supposed to be replaced by 3D ones.
And many more examples come to mind. Notice I didn’t even mention blockchain.
Was all this tech valuable and did it impact society in some way? Yes. Was the change as sudden and impactful as other people would have you believe? No.
What’s your point, internet man?
My point, fellow human, is that treating every single technological breakthrough as the end of the world doesn’t help you. Changes will come, definitely.
Learning new skills is always useful. But it’s rarely a necessity for survival.
The general rule of thumb is that when people cry wolf, they exaggerate. When people treat things with a dose of skepticism, that’s where you need to watch out since that thing might actually end up changing the world. Remember what Steve Ballmer said about the first iPhone.
In all honesty, I wish AI would take over - that would mean lateral thinking, something I’ve spent a while fine tuning, would be more valuable than ever.
But I think we’re still decades away from a tool that will truly impact our way of life the way smartphones have.
Because if you can predict the most probable outcome with AI (Machine Learning, though, technically speaking, since apparently we’re still not at AGI level - and that’s the one that really needs to scare you), lateral thinking will become one thing that sets us human apart.
That and filling out a CAPTCHA, of course.
Oh, ChatGPT, it’s like you barely know me…
