Human made

We all get bombarded with (learnings about) AI content here on LinkedIn these days.

Are you fed up with that? I am sometimes but I also want to know e v e r y t h i n g about it. It feeds my curiosity like crazy.

However I find myself not yet worrying whether AI will steel my job. Are you worried? If so, the key to that is keeping up to date with the right intel and developments. And very important: don’t respond or react to everything you see, hear or read about AI. It will be old news the week after.

AI developments are moving super fast. Last week I animé-fied (is this a word Chat?) my own LinkedIn profile picture and this week I am supposed to make my own action figure. And I hear boomers are massively making muppet AI versions of themselves on Facebook. Point taken. Not doing that anymore. Not a boomer :)

I also saw several posts about AI getting it wrong, specially in imaging. I have experienced this myself with free versions of AI websites / converters. You think you have written the best possible prompt but it turns out your ‘creation’ is missing a hand or only has three fingers. That is not funny.

In the past couple of weeks I have written several letters of application. A while ago, I decided to write them all myself and not use AI for it. Why? Because first of all, using AI for that takes me as long, if not longer than writing the letter myself.

Of course, if you feel this is not true, do not let me stop you from using it. But please, make it personal. I have read a lot of application letters in my career and human mistakes are much more fun than AI mistakes :) And if you do not make it personal, it will be noticed that the letter was written by AI.

The same goes for newsletters. I have written many of them in the past couple of years. The Coffee with Co newsletters are also written by me: the real Co. They are h u m a n  m a d e.

Sometimes I doubt about a sentence in English and I verify it with Chat. Most of the time, Chat GPT makes my sentences more boring and I did not ask for that. I asked for the correct English sentence. It should keep my personal tone of voice and wit (very important).

Something AI doesn’t have: momentum. Your prompt can have momentum, but I think it’s better to ‘reserve’ that momentum for your own writings

It could be that my point of view on AI makes me very naive or stubborn. That is probably correct. And I also need to practice more. I want to embrace it and at the same time I don't.

I believe human creativity, humor (when appropriate) and momentum are the best features of written content. This is something AI doesn’t have: momentum*. Your prompt could have momentum, but I think it’s better to ‘reserve’ that momentum for your own writings. Make use of it! Don’t let AI ruin your momentum. 

Where to use it for then? Well, use it for research. Use it for entertainment. And if you’re really good at it, experiment with making visuals, ads, or summaries of long copy. Maybe functional website copy could also be made by AI, like instructions or complex product descriptions. Translations (but check them).

I think a good rule would be: is creativity asked of me? Yes? Then don’t use it. Trust your brain and your own weird thoughts. (Don’t use all them weird thoughts lol ;)) But use your human ability to curate these weird thoughts. Also, embrace human imperfection, not AI imperfection. And if your creativity feels stuck, maybe, just maybe, use AI as a thought starter. But there is still always that option to talk to a human.

It’s Thursday. Have a great Friday and rapidly approaching weekend!

Co ☕️

*Momentum: the impetus** and driving force gained by the development of a process or course of events

**Impetus: something that makes a process or activity happen or happen more quickly

(English definitions powered by Oxford Languages on bab.la which means no AI this time)

Credits cartoon: A human made cartoon by Elisabeth McNair (or @margaret__elisabeth on Instagram) posted on Instagram by @newyorkermag on April 9th.