A too long stream of consciousness about the limitations and benefits of using AI to help with your business.
TLDR it has limitations and it’s amazing!
I’m not gonna lie, I was resistant.
I’ve use some AI tools — all of the photos I use are taken by me! Often they are edited with AI assistance and backgrounds (No, I don’t take them all to pose on the beach — I know you’re very disappointed.). This allows me to take the photo in any situation – my messy workspace, my booth wherever I’m set up with whatever lighting, holding them in the air in whatever room I have them – then I can make them look like something you will want to view. I know I’ve achieved when I want to look at them.
There might be somewhere the left images would work, but not on my site!
Still, I kept seeing the commercials about “young people starting businesses/running websites with AI” and I went in search of other tools. Suggestions for better product descriptions? Yes – I struggle to brag about myself and my creations. How many words can I use to describe earrings? “Cute, light, they hang in your ears” … some outside unbiased suggestions from AI are appreciated! I do work to make sure they are somewhere between neutral and my voice – and accurate!
Am I even writing this? Yes! These are all my words — Please don’t tell me you can tell the difference, but you probably can. I think it’s very important for my posts to be written in my words and my voice. It’s my opportunity to communicate directly with you – to share my process and my thoughts on things.
Do I write every blog post myself? No. How do I decide? The collection of posts about the meaning of different stones were totally written by AI using AI fantastical art and then edited by me to not be eternal or wrong. Why? There are only so many ways you can present the known and commonly understood meanings of stones and after reading so many resource sites and taking notes I was really concerned about plagiarizing anyone else’s voice. Plus, AI let me make them so much more fun than I had in me for so … many … different … stones. I love working with stones – I only have so much patience for writing about them one-by-one. (In full transparency, I’m bringing them from my previous website and making some edits to them as I do, so if you don’t see them yet, please check back.)
But this is not even about photos or descriptions of stones — and before I really get into what it is about I want to make a GenX plug for actually learning things yourself. It’s really really important and unless you know things (or know how to know things, how to critically think, how to actually research and find facts) you won’t know if AI is pulling all the wrong information together for you. Because that happens! A LOT!
Especially if you’re a young person, PLEASE do your own research projects and write your own papers. Claim your education! Find your passions and interests and read as much as you can. Even if you use an e-reader, read. I know sometimes the things you’re asked to write seem mind numbing and there’s so much you’d rather spend your time doing, but while they’re trying to destroy education in this country, please don’t comply in advance. I say this as the author of two books: AI might be able to write your research paper, but that doesn’t give you the skills that actually doing research and knowing how to fact check a resource will.
You also need to learn and know how to use AI — even if you’re so old it’s scary.
Not too long ago I apologized to my son for all the times I told him to get off the computer and gaming system because, “No one is going to pay you to play video games!” He lit up because that’s literally his job! He’s a STE for a company that tests video games as they head to market. I will not tell you what he’s working on because I have no idea because they lock that shit down!
AI is the direction everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – is going. I know there are varying levels of rumors, fears and myths about Clankers — and ridiculous talk from this administration about the jobs they see for all of us fixing the Clankers. It’s strange that our fears of a dystopian future are the future they’re trying to hype and sell us on. I hope I don’t have to do a tearful apology someday for the slurs used in this paragraph.
ChatGPT is different from other AI tools I’ve used. The interactive nature of it is very helpful and I was getting started with my new subscription by brainstorming with it about ways to improve my branding: it loved my logo but had some finessing suggestions, created a description for what I do that will create more cohesion across all platforms, a tagline, a list of different styles of one-liners and what items they would work best with so my voice stays consistent, and a one-month social media outline.
We discussed suggestions for improving my displays at vending markets and there were helpful suggestions. We were able to take the branding and apply it to packaging in a few new ways. I did so much work to create my branding and was thrilled with the positive feedback on what I’ve already done – but was also grateful for suggestions to take it all to the next level. I don’t have a degree in marketing — I know enough to have gotten this far and know what I want to do. I can see how someone doing drop shipping could have AI just do it all – branding myself is much more personal. I was able to critique suggestions and play an active role in everything we did.
Then, after spending almost 3 months trying to get my email set up on my new StellarSites — I had a thought! I have talked to people, done searches, gone rogue, and I still had one error I could not resolve. I asked ChatGPT if that was something it could help me with and I got an enthusiastic yes and some starter questions.
We spent the next hour exchanging information and, when I didn’t know where or how to find something needed, I was offered a breakdown of the steps to follow to get it. When we thought we might be at an impasse with finding some things, I asked if it would help to share everything I do show there. YES – let’s do that! Then I was given the solution, given the exact instructions for how to implement it, the code to copy and paste, where to paste it, AND a PDF outlining what we had done and documenting all of the code that I have in case I need it again. It even threw in a letter for me to submit to the people who had been helping me so they would know that it was resolved and what we’d done to resolve it!
After 3 months, I had finally gotten to the, “I don’t even know what to ask next,” stage of problem solving. I learned SO MUCH working to resolve this myself. I also learned that ChatGPT can solve the problem by knowing what to ask to get to the next step, AND that ChatGPT is willing to teach me those things.
ChatGPT’s newest version spent an evening with me, on my schedule, assisting me with branding, marketing, coding and website development, and creating an outline for things to work on that I hadn’t done because I couldn’t afford the teams it would have taken to do that. It didn’t take jobs from anyone — before last night I just didn’t have anyone I could afford to do those jobs that I don’t have the training to do.
Obviously this isn’t a complete dive into all of the ethical, moral, ecological, etc., issues that need to be considered by us as a society — and we do need to have those conversations–for instance, AI is harvesting knowledge from the culmination of what humanity has done, but individuals have been allowed to own AI and hoard the direct profit from it instead of all of us being compensated. That’s messed up.
For now, I’m grateful to start benefitting in my business in very tangible and practical ways that I couldn’t see a way to do the day before yesterday. That’s something.
