AI Skeptic Origins

Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to “The Doug Show.” I’m Doug Cunnington, and today I’m gonna talk about a few things that I use AI for. A couple of them I haven’t used too often, but I believe they could be a, a reasonable task to actually use AI. I’ve been, uh, you know, back and forth on the AI bandwagon overall over the years When I first had a, you know, a quick look at some of the early content tools like, uh, Jasper or was it Jarvis?

I forget what they called it. I think they changed the name. But, uh, they, they didn’t do… It was really good marketing and kind of bad execution as far as what was promised and what you actually got. Over time, it got better, but by then ChatGPT was just a better writer overall. And there are, uh, you know… I mean, I was a naysayer at the beginning, and I was calling people out for promoting, uh, you know, the tools while, you know, earning an affiliate commission and really, I mean, they weren’t delivering interesting, uh, tools.

But they did get better over time. You know, when I have new information over time, I would change my mind. I’m like, “Ah, actually, like this is changing things,” and it indeed changed the content website industry. So at this point, I’m still extremely skeptical. There have been a few podcast episodes in the last little bit where I’ve been, you know, roughly critical of AI.

And then I invited my friend Paul to come and talk about how he is covering AI on his YouTube channel. Super interesting. Interesting how he’s pivoted, and he’s, you know, obsessed with the topic area that he’s working with, so he enjoys it. And I chatted with, uh, you know, a couple other friends. Uh, one, one guy is actually a very high-level, successful coder, and he’s using AI very effectively, and he’s like, “It’s really good at doing X and Y, but it’s not so great at doing these other things.”

And I think it’s a key distinction where, you know, my friend is using it as, um, a tool to aid what he’s already pretty good at, and it’s a very sharp contrast to using AI as a crutch. And I have– I think when I’ve tested it, it was more of a crutch usage situation, and I’ll give a specific example.

Tool Not Crutch

But today, I’ll hopefully give you some specific examples that actually use the faults in the way that I am using it, and I’m trying to remember, hey, like use this as a tool, don’t use it as a crutch or something to be lazy.

I’m often a proponent of being lazy and, uh, being idle and, you know, just, uh A more relaxed lifestyle. And I think that’s good overall. But in these cases, it’s like, uh, y-you don’t want your brain to atrophy. You don’t want to do a worse job, um, because you’re not putting in the effort when maybe the effort really wasn’t that big of a deal, or if it helps you, you know, more in the future anyway.

So that’s the key thing to remember. Use AI as a tool to augment what you can already do or what you’re already doing, and then don’t use it as a crutch. When you find yourself using it as a crutch, you know, stop and, and do something different with it.

Writing Aid Workflows

So number one, I have been using AI effectively, basically as an, a writing, uh, aid, more of a, an editor, more of an editor versus like a idea generation, um, tool or anything like that.

And I mean, I’ve tested, um, trying to just come up with ideas, and a lot of times it’s not very good. So the best way to do this, and probably all of them, so I’m not gonna be, um, redundant and repeating, uh, this every single time. But basically, if you can come up with as many ideas or as much writing as you can before you use AI, that will hopefully preserve as many of your own original ideas as possible, and you’ll end up with better ideas.

Of course, AI is very good at regurgitating what it’s already stolen, uh, from other actual creative people, or hopefully not other AI, ’cause I think we’re, we’re at that point. But Basically, it’s not going to come up with any new, fresh ideas as far as I could tell. I mean, things are advancing all the time, but from what I understand, this is, um, just a way to repackage, uh, ideas and come at me in the comments or whatever, ’cause I…

Perhaps it’s a little more complicated than that, but, uh, as far as I could tell, it’s not. It’s like, uh, it predicts the next character, right? So it’s not really gonna come up with any new, fresh ideas. It’s just gonna copy other ones and maybe get lucky in putting some stuff together. Again, correct me if I’m wrong.

So if you could come up with as much as you can before you use AI to help you, that’ll be better. Some of these mix together, so, um, I would say, you know, for me personally, I would often come up with like an outline or a handful of ideas. Maybe it’s a couple sentences, but essentially I have like the core of what I’m aiming for.

For example, a podcast episode. So I’m aiming for, uh, having a podcast episode. I write an outline, maybe a couple sentences for each, um, section, and then, “Hey, what have I missed? What other ideas can fit in here?” And usually it’s not something that I could take verbatim, but maybe it gives me an idea of an area to explore a little bit more.

Again, I realize that it’s, um, taking ideas from other people, books, websites, YouTube videos, whatever. So you have to be careful that you don’t accidentally like take someone’s idea and think, “Oh, wow, I came up with that on my own using AI.” I mean, it’s just copying someone else. So remember that. That said, if you do write a little bit more, you maybe have a very effective editor.

You can clean up your writing. You can make it more concise, more clear. You could identify holes in your arguments perhaps, or if you’re writing like a, whatever, fiction, something creative, maybe you can identify holes in your plot and just do a better job because you missed something and the AI can actually pick that up.

Now, um, I’ll call that like two or three. So you could use it as a writing aid in some capacity. Um, you can potentially use it to do more of the specific writing, which I’ll throw in. Again, we’ll label this as one as like a writing aid, but really there’s like four sub-bullets. So one, write an outline, you can get more.

If let’s say it’s a boring technical document that it doesn’t really need the human element, and it’s actually better if it’s just clear and concise and, um, no mistakes, absolutely perfect, no tone, very vanilla. Again, technical document. If this is like, um, how to use a s- piece of software or something like that, you don’t necessarily want it to have like personality and jump off the page or anything like that.

It’d be perfect to use to, to write that job aid Another area is, uh, rewrites. So let’s say I want to call my cable company to get the best rate or discount or insurance company or whatever. Maybe you’re not good at that kind of negotiation on the phone or whatever, so you can, I mean, write incomplete sentences into your AI tool.

“Hey, I wanna get a lower rate. Here are some details about me as a customer. I’ve been with, um, you know, this company for eight years. I used to pay X, I’m now paying Y. I would love to get a better deal.” And just let AI craft the narrative a little bit better. So maybe you can negotiate a little more effectively.

Maybe you don’t know the tactics where you call in to cancel, and then you go all the way to the step where you’re about to cancel, and then, then you can launch into, you know, your negotiation. And maybe AI can write that a little better than you could come up with it cold when you’re on the phone and you don’t really have much to go off of.

Maybe you just don’t… I mean, maybe you don’t like doing that. But if you have a script to read, makes it a lot easier. So all that’s together.

Debate Partner Pitfalls

Another thing you can use AI for, and I have been, I’ve been sort of, um, dabbling with this, and that is to challenge your ideas and essentially have like a debating partner to go back and forth on an idea.

And it’s not always great, but at least you have a way to bounce ideas off of essentially an expert in whatever area it is. Um, I will mention some flaws in that, but you can obviously say, “I want to do, uh, whatever. I want to go back to school to get, uh, another degree, and here’s why I think it’s a good idea.

Let’s talk about the financial aspects, the, you know, the pros and the cons, how much it’ll cost now, how much will this help my earnings in the future?” And then you could have like a pretty well-balanced view at whatever thing you’re looking at. the big flaw here Is the information that AI is using might be shitty information.

It depends on the tool that you’re using, and I will mention, you know, the big flaw in how I’ve been using AI recently is I’m just using Gemini. So I have like a Google Drive or Google suite of products. I, I store files there and I have for years, and it’s just the system I use. So I pay a couple hundred bucks a month for storage.

With the storage, you get a couple benefits, and one of those is the pro version or essentially a paid version of Gemini. I don’t know what level they’ve repackaged it. They’ve moved me up and down, but I suspect it would be the equivalent of like the $20 account at Claude or ChatGPT. I used to pay for both Claude and ChatGPT, and then eventually I was like, “I’m not hardly using these tools.”

And this has been a couple years, so I stopped using both of those. I have heard that, um, both of those other tools, Claude and ChatGPT, seem to do a better job with, um, just providing better information. So the big flaw is I’m using Gemini and a lot of the material of like reference material ends up going back to Reddit or a forum, especially like very hard to find information.

And I’ll give an example. It could be very specific to me. If you’re going after like a big, you know, body of knowledge where there’s a ton of information, high quality information, maybe you don’t run into this issue. But basically, if you have a debating partner and you’re using, uh, this chatbot to go back and forth, help me point out flaws in my plan, and you’re talking to a fucking idiot, then not gonna be helpful.

And that’s what, um- Sorry, Redditors. That’s what I view Reddit is half the time. There’s some, there’s some subreddits that are totally fine, smart people, good information. Half the time I’m going in and I click on the reference in Gemini, and I see it’s someone on Reddit or a Facebook group or forum, and they actually don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.

They, they’re just like, “I think X will happen,” and I’ve gone to investigate a couple of times and I’m like, “That’s actually wro- like they wrote that incorrectly or they just don’t understand what they’re talking about.” And I would go verify that elsewhere. Very specific, and I’ll give my example. I’ve been getting some amps and stuff.

If you’re watching on YouTube, you see like a couple new ones sitting in front of me. Just got one back from the shop. That’s the, the one I was just playing through with a mic hooked up in front of it there. And basically, the information from an electronic standpoint is very clear. I, I just needed to go and like look something up and verify my understanding.

And when I did, I was like, “Oh, that person was wrong in the thread.” However, that was the only reference to the very specific question that I was looking for, hence Google said, “Well, this is the only information on the internet about this specific thing.” And I’m– You know, Google is treating that as fact, and it was just some asshole on Reddit.

So that obviously could happen anywhere. Perhaps if I looked at one of the other tools, Claude or ChatGPT, it wouldn’t treat that information in the same way. It wouldn’t, it wouldn’t just be like, “Oh, if it’s on Reddit, it is absolutely a fact.” So that is something that you’ll have to ch-check the resources.

And the big issue is if you’re not an expert in the specific topic area, then you don’t know when it’s wrong and you don’t… I mean, you would have to go and look it up and verify it, and I think that’s a fine thing to do. I was just on a podcast with my friend Cody Berman and the FI Show. I don’t think the episode’s out yet, but should be coming out really soon. Cody mentioned that he, he’s on– he’s big in the financial independence community, he mentioned that he would use AI to, you know, talk about his financial plan essentially, and like: “Oh yeah, use it as a financial planner.”

And this is where I– and I’ve seen other highly knowledgeable, smart people say: “Hey yeah, use AI as kind of a financial planner.” And I think maybe it can get there someday. I’ve seen too many fuck-ups, too much just straight up wrong information that I don’t think I would trust it. And the thing is, like I said, Cody, he’s an expert.

I mean, he, he knows what is going on generally, and he basically could– I mean, he wrote a book on financial independence. So he’s, he’s beyond an expert, like he’s extremely knowledgeable. So if there’s a mistake, like he would pick it up and he would see it. Similar to, you know, what I’ve mentioned and this– that’s the example that I often use.

I’m an expert in a handful of things and, or at least like an enthusiast in a few things, and I am, I’m shocked that people actually recommend using AI for things that are important. And it, it must be– Again, maybe it’s just because I’m using Gemini and he’s using Claude or ChatGPT, and it’s a little bit better.

I have no fucking idea. But from what I can see, there’s so many mistakes that I wouldn’t actually trust it for anything really important, and I don’t know how other people do. It actually like blows my mind. So that said, Be extremely cautious

Summaries And Organization

All right, here’s one that should be roughly a slam dunk. I mean, I was trying to tell you about things that I’m using AI for, but I, I can’t emphasize the mistakes enough. So I’m sorry, but okay, this one should be pretty good. Summarize long documents. All right, so I’ve definitely, um, gotten a few long PDFs where I’m like, I could read all of this.

However, I could probably just have, um, a very nice summary written, and this could be something that is not, um, like not something where I need to read every single page. And perhaps as long as I have a broad overview of whatever it is, I’ll be just fine. So that said, I mean, you just put a PDF in there and it pops out on the other end.

The other thing, um, that I have been using is, um, there’s actually on YouTube, it’s like Gemini summaries, and those are very nice for a forty-five minute… I mean, maybe people do it for these episodes, right? It’s a forty-five minute, um, video, person’s rambling on. Maybe they get off topic like I, uh, tend to do.

And then, uh, it’s pretty helpful to have, uh, just a handful of sentences, a paragraph or two, and then timestamps, and then you could dive into those specific areas to, to get the information that you’re looking for. So again, that’s a twofer. You can use it for, um, you know, PDFs but on video, highly recommend, especially for, you know, sort of more educational or longer, , form video content

Similar idea, but in the other direction. It could help you organize your messy thoughts. And typically, what I have done is write in a notebook or a legal pad or something, and it could go on for a few pages. You can, you know, do some light formatting or whatever, but you could also just have, like, disorganized notes and take a picture, upload the image, and it can organize and clean up your written, handwritten content, which is pretty amazing when you think about it.

I mean, for me personally, writing things down with a, a pen on paper is different than typing it out. Um, I was about to say I’m a slow typer, which is true. I’m also a slow, uh, hand writer, which, I mean, typically, it’s not like I’m thinking super fast and the limiting factor is how fast I can write. It’s usually my slow brain.

But I have heard people will get out their voice memo and make a long recording and then upload the MP3 or whatever the audio file is and then organize those thoughts. I think in a similar way that typing and, and handwriting your thoughts uses a different part of your brain. My hunch is saying things out loud also uses a different part of your brain.

So all can be effective. Some people wanna talk things out, say things out loud. Other people wanna write them down. So maybe you wanna do a little combo of all three. For me, I think writing it down is a little bit better. Um, I have heard of people, you know, going on their walk and then, you know, turn on their voice memo and just, like, talk through a bunch of stuff, upload it, and then hopefully they’ll get some kind of organized thing at the, the other, the other side.

And I think that could be highly effective, especially if you’re, I don’t know, let’s say you’re in your car commuting or something like that. That could be a great way to use that time and be more, like, self-reflective. Uh, of course, you could do that for any kind of content that you’re thinking of, whether it’s, um, you know, your own personal projects.

Maybe you’re a content creator of some kind. Maybe it’s, um, again, self-reflection where it is maybe something specifically, um, that you’re working on, on, like, a, a personal development level

Learning And Project Planning

This one’s a little bit similar to one that I mentioned before, and that is for learning. And I have heard people can use AI for learning a specific thing. “Hey, I’m a total beginner in, um, electronics. Tell me about how tube amplifiers work versus solid state.” And again, if it’s a very big body of knowledge, there’s a strong chance you’ll get the broad points correct.

The issues that I often run into are around very specific questions when you’re in the details, and those are not really beginner level questions. So I think that would apply to almost anything. If you’re like, “Hey, I would like to become better at, um, whatever, survival and just, whatever, living off the grid or something like that.”

You’re like, “I don’t know anything about it. Like, what are the things that I need to learn o- on a basic level, and how might I expand in the future?” And you could probably have a pretty effective conversation in that way. Um, you could do it again for anything. If you’re like, “Hey, I wanna learn how to, um, be a, a baker, and I’m really curious about sourdough,” there’s tons of information on that, and you’ll be able to get pretty accurate information.

All right. I haven’t used this one too often, but I’ll make it more broad and hopefully it’ll help apply to more different situations out there. But from a project management standpoint, I think AI can be very effective. And essentially, this is the same idea as, you know, challenging your ideas and your, um, your, your thoughts on a specific topic.

And I’ll give an example. So let’s say you come up with some new business plan. Let’s say, um, you know, it’s a new online business venture, maybe it’s a SaaS product, something like that, and you’re thinking about the schedule, you’re thinking about competitors and risk, and essentially going through your business plan and your project, um, overall.

So of course, from the business perspective, you can go back and forth and have a debate partner for the business side of it. More specifically from a project management standpoint, and the area that I was often in is risk management and scheduling and budgeting. And the scheduling, you know, this is one that I talk about all the time where things take longer than you think they’re going to take, and we’re very optimistic about how fast we can get things done and the lack of obstacles that will, um, come up.

Turns out obstacles usually do pop up. Those are risks out there. So from that standpoint, I think you can go through a schedule and ask about, you know, how I could avoid potential risks that impact the schedule for whatever your, your business plan is. I mean, let’s say it is that online New business venture, uh, some SaaS thing, and maybe, you know, you run into some sort of hosting or connectivity issues or APIs or integrations don’t work for some reason, and that, uh, of course, impacts your schedule, maybe impacts your cost because now you have to integrate in a different way, some way that you didn’t think of.

So very good, um, from that perspective as far as coming up with things that you didn’t think of and help identify your blind spots. And again, a lot of these, um, you know, it’s the same, it’s the same kind of strategy. You’re just applying it to a different area. So in almost all of these cases, it’s like, “Hey, what am I missing?

What, what don’t I know? Um, can you tell me where this plan is gonna fail?” Like, those are very important things to identify. And when you’re optimistic enough to try to start a new venture, usually, I mean, you have to be, uh, ignorant enough to go ahead and start and not know all the different ways that you could fail.

But it’s good to identify some of the, you know, the big obstacles that you’re almost certainly gonna face.

Personal Tools And Amp Update

All right, as we finish up As we finish up here, I’ll give you one that I haven’t done at all, but I have, um, been thinking about giving it a shot, and this is creating some sort of tool. And I’m– I don’t wanna create any software that other people use.

I think creating your own personal tools could be a pretty cool thing to do. So when I talked to Paul Lipsky a few weeks back, I was like: “Oh, have you done any vibe coding?” And I was like: “I know you’re not a coding guy, so I, I mean, I’m expecting the answer to be no.” He said: “Yes, I actually have coded, um, some things.

However, they’re just my own personal tools.” I think he dabbled with software in the past, and he didn’t enjoy the business model overall. If you’re creating your own tools, you don’t have to, um, d- deal with customers. You don’t have to deal with users. You don’t have to deal with the failure points of, um, just different issues that you’re gonna run into with customers and the different, um, compatibility issues you might have.

You’re just using it as your own personal tool, and I think that could be pretty interesting. One thing that might be helpful, I, I was trying to think of things that I actually do on a regular basis, and some of the, I mean, it’s, you know, podcast, um, ideas and formatting certain things, and that could be helpful.

I think it’s also probably a very s-simple tool overall. So from that standpoint, it could be interesting for me to try to create something that actually does save me time. So that’s the trick. I need to figure out something that will truly save me time and not just, um, like an exercise to create something that I’m not really gonna use.

Doesn’t sound too fun to me. So if you have any ideas out there, let me know. The other is, um, just o-one of my friends, he sent out an email, and he moved off WordPress. Actually, let me know, um, out there if you’re on, um, the audio side, feedback@doug.show is my email, or you can leave a comment over on YouTube.

But if you have moved off of WordPress and use either some static, um, HTML type, um, just file system for your website now. The thing is, I’m, I’m definitely at a point where I’m like, “Do I even need a we- do I… Is this just overhead that I don’t give a shit about?” And I was looking at Niche Site Project, and I was like, I mean, I think mostly bots go to it.

I, I don’t even know who goes to the site. No one signs up for the email list, and I’m, I mean, I send out an email maybe, like, twice a month or something like that. And at this point And at this point, it’s probably, you know, gobbling up a few hundred dollars per year, which is not a ton, but it’s also, um, if it’s n- not doing anything, then there’s no reason for me to keep that around.

I could literally do anything else with that, like buy organic treats for Georgie or something like that. Hopefully she, she didn’t hear that. She’s sitting right behind me. So anyway, if you have any ideas for tools that might be helpful, might save me a little time, but I haven’t really thought of anything where I’m like, “This can save me time,” that I would actually use.

Anyway, those are the things that I actually use AI for, and along with a lot of caveats and a lot of things that I don’t use AI for. And I did, I took some liberties, and I, I did throw in the vibe coding thing, but I think it’s only for your own tools. Unless you’re a software person and you’re like, “I wanna try to build something,” that’s cool, you know.

Use it as a tool, not a crutch. Little update on the amp. Couple weeks ago, I mentioned that, um, I took that amp, um, this Gibson GA-8T. I, uh, was trying to break in the speaker, and essentially I blew the, uh, the tube, which was a very old set of tubes in there, so kind of natural. I smelled, uh, something electrical.

It could’ve just been, you know, normal, um, you know, the circuit board heating up. Actually, not circuit board, but there’s the wires and the transformers heating up, and I think that was probably it. So I did take it to the tech who worked on it before, which I think that amp was in shambles when the person that I bought it from got it.

So it was rebuilt, like recapped. So I dropped it off, and the guy was like, “I think you just blew a tube.” He was like, um, “Everything else looks pretty good.” He mentioned that he was like, “Ah, maybe I could put a speaker jack on there,” and I was like, “Oh, actually, I was thinking that.” The other thing is, um, I had him add a switch for the tremolo, so the GA-8T, the T stands for tremolo.

And I was like, “Oh yeah, can you put a switch on the top of the chassis to be able to just switch it?” There’s the original foot switch, but I was like, “Ah, it’s a little old.” It’s actually made of wood, so there’s a switch in there, and, um, yeah, the pedal is, like, wood, and then there’s a switch, and you step on it, and it works fine, but the wire’s a little old.

So anyway, he spruced up a couple little things, put a speaker jack in there, put a switch so that I don’t have to take out the, um, the pedal and use the old switch in there. I can just flip the switch on the top, and sounds awesome. Really great speaker in there, high-end speaker, and I have, um, way too many amps.

I actually have a, another one, a couple, um, another one out of frame over there and a couple speaker cabs. So I have, um, go- gone off the deep end here, but they sound awesome. And I appreciate everyone listening to me talk about guitar amps and stuff.