🤖 The Nouns of November 15, 2024

1. NEW QUOTE ABOUT AI: Skipping Invention

2. NEW QUOTE: The inevitability of music

3. NEW AI: Google Notebook LM

“Painters like painting.
Writers like having written.”

I think most of the current state of AI can be boiled down to the above quote.

In The 6 Types of Working Genius, Patrick Lencioni describes the six stages of all work:

1. Wonder: asking the big question

2. Invention: creating potential answers

3. Discernment: choosing the right answer

4. Galvanizing rallying a team around that answer

5. Enablement: supporting the answer through its journey

6. Tenacity: getting it across the finish line

For those of us who love Invention, the act of creating itself can be a joy. In other words, we like to paint.

But for the rest, that can be incredibly painful work.

The daunting blank page on the desk, begging us to come up with some great novel idea.

AI is simply a shortcut to Invention.

It allows us to be a writer without loving to write.

It allows us to be a painter without facing that horrifying blank canvas.

In other words, it allows you to create without pain.

But can you have creativity without pain?

Take a practical example.

I recently sat in a session with a client and asked them to read their Core Values Speech. This is intended to be a powerful speech delivered to the entire company, introducing the 3-7 principles that are most central to driving the culture of the team.

They awkwardly read five paragraphs of copy off the computer as if for the first time.

Then said it wasn’t very good because Chat GPT wrote it.

😤

If you skip the pain of Invention.

And try to jump right to Galvanizing a team of humans around an AI's ideas.

You will fail.

You don’t get a medal for crossing the finish line.

You get one for running the whole race.

Then, the finish line is inevitable.

I started writing this newsletter as a digital middle finger to the flood of AI-written garbage heaps that started showing up in my inbox. We need a little human in our lives, and I hope New Nouns can be that for you.

That being said, AI is happening, and as they say: “AI isn’t going to take your job. Someone who knows how to use AI is.”

The Rundown (who is kindly supporting this issue of New Nouns) is a great way to know what the hell is happening in the world of AI. That way you’ll at least be aware that the robots are going to start teaching your yoga class.

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Great AI, Bad Name: Google Notebook LM

If you have yet to check out Google Notebook LM, it is an experimental closed-environment AI platform build by Google.

Essentially, you can upload documents and have Google’s Gemini AI help you search and understand them.

If you’re studying, researching, or trying to understand what that really long email attachment your uncle sent is about without reading it, check it out.

I dumped an entire 800 page book about my family history in and it was able to immediately spit out citations for every historical family member with my name.

There were zero, but still.