Latest AI Tools

However you may personally feel about the latest & rapidly growing suite of (what we’re calling) “AI” tools, the fact is, it’s never a bad idea to understand how these tools work. Even more so, you just might benefit from learning more about them. This isn’t to suggest that we’re advocating for these AI tools & automated systems to circumvent human talent. On the contrary; the intention is to provide a better understanding about where we stand with these growing, nascent asset classes.

At the end of the day, when we’re challenged, human talent & potential grows when we understand expectations, and we see where the bar is raised. Do these AI tools make certain tedious tasks easier to manage? That has yet to be determined. The intention with all the “AI” startups popping up out of the woodwork was to act as a time-saver, to regain more access to our bank of time to pursue honing our own crafts & skills, as well as our own passions, career goals, and personal dreams. It’s no secret that the billionaire dollar investors & venture capital firms behind the funding of these technological innovations are putting forth a lot of effort in their PR campaigns to paint this picture of AI helping to empower humans & promote self-sufficiency. But is that how they’re actually being utilized?

To be clear, these tools are not a replacement for humans. Not by a long shot. At most, they’re tools to be leveraged by humans, to augment our efforts. Even though we’re seeing a lot of people leverage these tools, dumping new creative visual content out in droves, inundating our social timelines, it’s hard not to examine the creative output prompted by humans who are leveraging these creative tools like a hot new trend ripe for spoil, and see it as a degradation of creativity. There’s a really great quote from the movie, Jurassic Park, by Jeff Goldblum’s character, Dr. Ian Malcolm. He says this during the initial tour of Jurassic Park, when they’re sitting down for lunch to discuss this major scientific accomplishment, “I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re using here: it didn’t require any discipline to attain it… your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” A very powerful & thought-provoking quote that is incredibly relevant to the topic of AI. Especially in terms of how the average lay person is leveraging these tools; “it didn’t require any discipline to attain it.” To attain what? The talent.

The level of discipline required to attain a skill is no small feat. Essentially you’re starting from nothing. You’re only armed with your imagination. You have to make sacrifices, committing your time to research, study, and apply what you learn along the way, and through repetition, mistakes, and failures, you develop new neural pathways in the brain. It’s almost like you’re assembling a giant puzzle from hundreds of thousands of pieces. Initially, you’re so close to it, that you can’t perceive the whole picture. But the more you assemble the pieces together, the clearer the picture becomes, as does your perception. And before you know it, you can take a step back and see the bigger picture. At that moment, you realize you’ve acquired a whole new skill. And through that acquisition, you realize you’ve grown as a human being. And that neurological growth is directly tied to our evolution, as a species. To obtain the necessary level of expertise in any area of study, will only further aid in our understanding of how we deploy the use-case of these AI tools. Especially when considering the ethical implications.

With all that said, here’s a list of some AI tools that we’re paying close attention to: