Between trip, end-of-year tasks, the approaching holidays, and different hysteria, I haven’t give you an article this month. So right here’s a fast record of issues which have amazed me not too long ago.
Are we digital but?
I’m removed from the primary particular person to search out NotebookLM superb, and I actually received’t be the final. I did a easy experiment: I pointed it at two of my latest posts, “Suppose Higher” and “Henry Ford Does AI.” Each the abstract and steered questions NotebookLM offered have been fairly good: They went past merely commenting on the 2 items and bought into the connection between the 2. However what blew me away was the podcast it generated: an eight-minute dialogue between two artificial individuals who sounded and engaged. (Right here’s an outline of a number of the strategies Google places to make use of to make it occur.) Was it 100% right? No, however actually, if a human summarized my articles, I’d most likely discover just a few issues to complain about.
Be taught quicker. Dig deeper. See farther.
Being Google, after the preliminary expertise, the consumer interface was greater than a bit clunky. After I wished to return to the podcast just a few days later, I needed to play “guess what to click on” means an excessive amount of. (Trace: Would you guess that you have to click on on “Pocket book Information”? Why doesn’t the podcast participant seem by default?) However that’s actually a really minor drawback.
Fashions utilizing computer systems
Anthropic’s pc use API is now out there in beta. Beta is true—there’s clearly so much occurring right here that’s harmful and simply abusable. But it surely’s additionally loads of enjoyable, and it factors towards a brand new route for AI improvement.
In essence (and I could have the essence fallacious), pc use permits you to inform Claude find out how to use a pc: browsers, editors, shells, something that may have a consumer interface on a display screen (and probably extra). Anthropic gives a demo as a Docker container, so you’ll be able to run it safely. As soon as the container is operating, you may give Claude an issue to resolve; it’s going to work out find out how to clear up that drawback, and use the container’s digital Linux pc to do the work. For instance, you may ask it to fill out a spreadsheet with information it collects from web sites. Claude will do all the press, copying, and pasting for you.
Is that this revolutionary? My first response was “Massive deal, I can add a file to GPT and use it to browse the net for me.” In precept that’s true, though ChatGPT doesn’t enable net searching and file importing in the identical dialog. What’s actually new? Take into consideration the monstrous immediate you’d must get GPT to learn a spreadsheet, discover out what information was lacking, search for that information on the internet, and generate a brand new up to date spreadsheet. It wouldn’t be easy. With pc use, most of that complexity disappears.
Does it actually disappear? We’ll discover out as we get additional in. We’re nonetheless on the stage the place hallucinations and misbehavior are cute somewhat than vital. It’s straightforward for Claude to be misled into decoding one thing on a random web site as a immediate. It will likely be a subject day for immediate injection assaults. And I can think about loads of enhancements. Pc use presently works by taking screenshots and transport them to Claude, which computes the place to click on. That appears extremely awkward, particularly on condition that many functions have accessibility affordances which may make the screenshotting pointless.
For now, chill out and take a breath. Don’t use pc use for something severe but—it’s essential to heed Anthropic’s many warnings. However it is best to play with it and take into consideration what it means. An automatic framework for testing net functions, Selenium++? A instrument for negotiating with on-line distributors? We’re a lot nearer to an agent-filled world the place we ask a pc what to do and it does it for us.
Might this be the top of CRM?
Considerably alongside the identical strains: Sam Lessin posted on Twitter (I received’t name it X) a couple of very intelligent and helpful hack. He exported a few years of e mail, used GPT to extract key components, and uploaded it to NotebookLM (sure, once more), which permits him to ask questions on his conversations over the previous decade. Who did I discuss to? Why? What are the matters we talked about? That’s all helpful info.
Sam argues that that is the top of structured buyer relationship administration (CRM) software program. I received’t supply an opinion for buyers or founders, however his course of resonated with me instantly. I’ve labored with many authors and potential authors over the many years, and my e mail consists of conversations with hundreds of individuals. So after I need to ask a query like “I need to perceive extra about DDOS; who ought to I discuss to?” my first step is to go to Gmail and begin looking out. E-mail is my CRM system; I’ve by no means used a industrial CRM product.
Sadly and paradoxically, Gmail’s means to look is sort of poor. Utilizing it for contact administration, although it may be made to work, isn’t nice. Can I simply ask NotebookLM? Completely.
E-mail-based CRM may even be an excellent startup thought, although it’s laborious to think about succeeding long-term. There wouldn’t be a lot of a “moat” to guard a startup in opposition to bigger corporations—like Google itself. I can simply think about Google constructing this sort of AI-enabled search instantly into Gmail. They have already got all the info.
That’s it for this month. That wasn’t so dangerous—perhaps I ought to do that extra usually.
