Iain Thomas is a poet, writer, and the Chief Innovation Officer at Sounds Enjoyable—an promoting and artistic company that he co-founded with the assumption that human creativity might be enhanced, relatively than diminished, with the assistance of AI. It’s a realization that truly started to daybreak on Iain just a few years prior, after his mom died. He wasn’t positive easy methods to clarify loss of life to his kids, so he turned to an early model of ChatGPT for assist—and was so impressed by the poetry of its responses that he got here away satisfied of AI’s immense potential as a thought companion for his artistic work.
On season two of the Dropbox podcast Working Smarter, Iain talks about utilizing AI to make more room for the artistic elements of your work, and why, in a world the place everybody has entry to the identical instruments, it’s by no means been extra necessary to lean into the abilities, context, and experiences that make every of us most unusual—and most human.
You may learn an excerpt of our dialog with Iain under.
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For somebody like your self who’s already actually expert at their craft, the place does AI assist essentially the most?
AI is a extremely highly effective second pair of eyes. For those who’re extremely assured in your expertise and do not suppose AI can match that, that is a superbly affordable expectation. I’ve a complete bunch of author associates who write novels and quick tales and they’re going to usually take a web page that they’ve written and paste it into ChatGPT and say, “does this make sense? Are the themes that I am making an attempt to land coming by?” And you are able to do that throughout enterprise—like, “Faux to be this sort of buyer. How would you reply to this? What are the issues that I am lacking right here?”
I believe that after we discuss AI as augmented intelligence that is actually when it comes into its personal—the place it could energy your authentic considering and strain take a look at it as you are exploring it. It is severely underutilized in that sense. Lots of people begin with AI, whereas my private opinion is: begin with your self. Begin with your individual novelty, your individual originality, your individual distinctive insights that you simply convey as a human. After which use AI to compound it and scale it and construct it out, as a result of that is what it is actually, actually good at.
A part of what you do at Sounds Enjoyable is figure with shoppers to convey their concepts to life. Is all people you encounter instantly on board with utilizing AI for that? Or do you generally encounter skepticism, concern, or resistance?
Sure. And infrequently that particular person is me. After I stroll right into a room, I say that my job is to be essentially the most cynical, skeptical particular person within the room. As a result of the character of this expertise is that it is so thrilling and so energizing which you can form of get carried away. You may overlook what it is good for, and the place it makes essentially the most sense. Utilizing it to enhance your present efforts, to streamline issues, to be extra environment friendly—that is nice. However discovering these new use circumstances, after which ensuring that they make sense inside your corporation context and the issues that you simply’re constructing in your viewers, and in your clients—that is a extremely necessary half as properly.
For individuals who do not work in what we contemplate historically artistic roles, what do artistic makes use of of AI appear to be for them?
I believe that curiosity, marvel, and creativity is about to turn out to be extra necessary than it is ever been earlier than. As a result of the double-edged sword of AI is that it makes something attainable—nevertheless it makes something attainable for nearly everybody. So if everybody has entry to the identical expertise that may accomplish all these unimaginable issues, then how do you set your self aside? And the first methodology of doing that’s by creativity, curiosity, and marvel. Your superpower going into the long run, so far as I am involved, is your individualism—the factor that makes you, you.
I believe sameness is my large fear and my large concern as a result of like I mentioned, if anybody could make something, then all of it form of begins to really feel the identical. The rationale that these instruments are as unimaginable as they’re is as a result of they have been educated on these huge corpuses of textual content. However the fact of the world is that not all the things has been written down. And you’ve got experiences as a person, as a human being, which are profound, unimaginable, and distinctive to you that occur each single day. For those who take note of the world round you, you can not quantify the quantity of information that you simply absorb each single day of your life by your eyes—the issues that you simply scent, the sensation of sitting in your chair, the feelings that you simply really feel whenever you see your spouse or your children or your husband, whoever it’s. All of that’s information and it is distinctive to you. You’re the solely individual that experiences that.
And bizarrely because it sounds, that’s one thing that in a enterprise context you really must pay extra consideration to as a result of novelty and ingenuity and the power to kind connections between issues comes from there. It comes from what you are engaged on. It comes from your corporation. It comes from trying on the world round you and having a profound sense of consciousness and having the ability to make new connections.
I do not need to reside in a tradition that’s basically outlined by sameness, by boringness, and so I believe creativity is a giant problem for the enterprise world and for tradition broadly. I believe we’re making a society that fears boredom—however creativity comes from boredom. Creativity comes from going for a stroll. Creativity comes from extra time, and I believe that it must be one thing we heart inside ourselves and inside our companies and inside our groups much more.
Do companies spend sufficient time encouraging folks to embrace individuality and artistic considering within the work they do? Is it one thing they need to be encouraging extra of?
Completely. The knee-jerk response proper now to this expertise is “how can we use this to be extra environment friendly? What instruments can we create? What methods and processes can we implement?” Which is nice. That is an inexpensive response. So then your job turns into, “how will we make higher selections?” And higher selections, to my thoughts, are sometimes novel and helpful, which is the definition of one thing that is artistic.
The output you get from most AI instruments is barely pretty much as good because the enter you give it. May you discuss a little bit bit concerning the function that creativity performs from a prompting perspective? What’s your strategy there to getting good responses?
I do not begin with a immediate. I begin with a clean piece of paper and a pencil, normally, when it comes to what I need to accomplish.
You go analog.
I am going analog. And I convey that distinctive human expertise to the web page when it comes to what I need to accomplish. After which I’ll do one thing like go to ChatGPT and say, “Here is this concept I am considering of. What are three or 4 different examples of this? How else may I do that? After which what may go unsuitable with this concept? What are the totally different ways in which I may convey this to life?” However I by no means begin there. As a result of the character of AI is it is unimaginable at scale. It is unimaginable at taking what you’ve got given it and working with it. However you’ll be able to’t ask it to run from the start, as a result of what it offers to you it’s going to give completely everybody else on the planet. And so you need to begin with you. You must begin with your individual talents.
This interview has been edited and condensed. For extra interviews and previous episodes, go to workingsmarter.ai
