Between trip, end-of-year tasks, the approaching holidays, and different hysteria, I haven’t provide you with 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 seek out NotebookLM superb, and I actually received’t be the final. I did a easy experiment: I pointed it at two of my current posts, “Assume Higher” and “Henry Ford Does AI.” Each the abstract and urged questions NotebookLM supplied had been fairly good: They went past merely commenting on the 2 items and received 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 few of the strategies Google places to make use of to make it occur.) Was it 100% appropriate? No, however actually, if a human summarized my articles, I’d in all probability discover a number of issues to complain about.
Study quicker. Dig deeper. See farther.
Being Google, after the preliminary expertise, the consumer interface was greater than a bit clunky. After I needed to return to the podcast a number of days later, I needed to play “guess what to click on” means an excessive amount of. (Trace: Would you guess that that you must click on on “Pocket book Information”? Why doesn’t the podcast participant seem by default?) However that’s actually a really minor downside.
Fashions utilizing computer systems
Anthropic’s pc use API is now accessible in beta. Beta is correct—there’s clearly lots happening right here that’s harmful and simply abusable. Nevertheless it’s additionally plenty of enjoyable, and it factors towards a brand new course for AI growth.
In essence (and I’ll have the essence unsuitable), pc use means that you can inform Claude the way to use a pc: browsers, editors, shells, something that may have a consumer interface on a display (and probably extra). Anthropic gives a demo as a Docker container, so you possibly can run it safely. As soon as the container is operating, you may give Claude an issue to resolve; it would determine the way to remedy that downside, and use the container’s digital Linux pc to do the work. For instance, you would 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 internet 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 net, 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 essential. It’s straightforward for Claude to be misled into deciphering one thing on a random web site as a immediate. Will probably be a area day for immediate injection assaults. And I can think about loads of enhancements. Pc use at the moment 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 purposes 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 vital to heed Anthropic’s many warnings. However you need to play with it and take into consideration what it means. An automatic framework for testing internet purposes, Selenium++? A software 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 data.
Sam argues that that is the top of structured buyer relationship administration (CRM) software program. I received’t provide an opinion for traders or founders, however his course of resonated with me instantly. I’ve labored with many authors and potential authors over the a long time, and my e-mail consists of conversations with 1000’s of individuals. So once I wish to ask a query like “I wish 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 business CRM product.
Sadly and sarcastically, Gmail’s potential to go looking 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 would possibly even be a very good startup concept, although it’s onerous 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 straight into Gmail. They have already got all the information.
That’s it for this month. That wasn’t so unhealthy—possibly I ought to do that extra typically.
