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 just lately.
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 current posts, “Suppose Higher” and “Henry Ford Does AI.” Each the abstract and urged questions NotebookLM offered have been fairly good: They went past merely commenting on the 2 items and acquired 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 truthfully, 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 person interface was greater than a bit clunky. Once I wished to return to the podcast a number of days later, I needed to play “guess what to click on” approach an excessive amount of. (Trace: Would you guess that you might want 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 obtainable in beta. Beta is true—there’s clearly rather a lot 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 could have the essence incorrect), pc use permits you to inform Claude how you can use a pc: browsers, editors, shells, something that may have a person interface on a display (and presumably extra). Anthropic supplies a demo as a Docker container, so you’ll be able to run it safely. As soon as the container is working, you can provide Claude an issue to unravel; it can work out how you can clear up that drawback, and use the container’s digital Linux pc to do the work. For instance, you would ask it to fill out a spreadsheet with knowledge it collects from web sites. Claude will do all the press, copying, and pasting for you.
Is that this revolutionary? My first response was “Large deal, I can add a file to GPT and use it to browse the online for me.” In precept that’s true, though ChatGPT doesn’t permit 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 knowledge was lacking, search for that knowledge 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 fairly than crucial. It’s simple for Claude to be misled into decoding one thing on a random web site as a immediate. It is going to 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 provided that many functions have accessibility affordances that may make the screenshotting pointless.
For now, chill out and take a breath. Don’t use pc use for something critical but—it’s necessary 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 device 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 electronic 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 speak to? Why? What are the subjects 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 supply 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 electronic mail contains conversations with 1000’s of individuals. So after I wish to ask a query like “I wish to perceive extra about DDOS; who ought to I speak to?” my first step is to go to Gmail and begin looking out. Electronic mail is my CRM system; I’ve by no means used a industrial CRM product.
Sadly and mockingly, 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.
Electronic mail-based CRM would possibly even be a great startup concept, although it’s arduous to think about succeeding long-term. There wouldn’t be a lot of a “moat” to guard a startup towards bigger corporations—like Google itself. I can simply think about Google constructing this type of AI-enabled search immediately 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 usually.
