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Communication style

Long time reader David shared a great chatGPT tip with me that you might want to try too.

As many of you know, you can shape the way chatGPT responds by giving it custom instructions. For example, you can ask it to anticipate audience questions or to discuss contrarian perspectives.

But you can also give it instructions to influence the style of the response. I felt truly humbled by what David had asked ChatGPT to do in this regard:

“Style: Ensure responses are clear, concise, and insightful, in line with the communication style of Dr Michael Gerharz.”

Of course, I immediately jumped on ChatGPT to check what it thinks my communication style actually is. See for yourself; it’s pretty close.

Feel free to try out this custom instruction and see what it does to chatGPT’s responses for you.

Which ChatGPT tricks do you find worth sharing? I’d love to hear them!

Being human

One of the fascinating aspects of AI is that it forces us to reconsider what “uniquely human” actually means.

For years, we’ve leveraged computers to handle tedious tasks, freeing us to engage in what machines can’t – being human. But as AI evolves and the lines continue to blur, what actually are those irreplaceable human qualities that define us? What is it that can’t be imitated by a computer?

When I connect with my loved ones over the holidays, I look forward to the spontaneous laughter, the shared stories, the warmth of empathy. These are experiences that still seem beyond the reach of an algorithm.

But what about you? In the dawn of the AI era, what does being human mean to you?

Sorry, first ideas are sold out

I’m sorry to have to inform you that first ideas have already been taken.

Not that first ideas had ever been a good deal (except for maybe in the very early days).

First ideas are almost never the best ideas, in part because first ideas tend to be the obvious ideas. It’s very likely that if it’s your first idea then it’s other people’s first idea, too.

First ideas are what you get without digging deep.

Thanks to AI that means game over. AI will generate first ideas not only faster but better (as it can tap into all the first ideas that all the other people have previously given). Quite likely, AI’s first ideas will be much better than yours.

It’s the move beyond the first idea that remains hard. That’s where AI still needs guidance and where the will to dig deeper pays off most.

Digging deeper is where you can still make a difference.

Handcrafted plates

Plates used to be handmade. Today, almost all plates are machine made. Most people are just fine with this but some still care for handcrafted plates.

The same will probably soon be true for copywriting. Or any writing, for that matter.

Just like with plates there’s nothing wrong with this. Machine made plates work fine. In fact, in many regards they are superior to handmade plates. More so, machines allow us to make things that no human could make.

And yet, there’s value in the knowledge that something is handcrafted. It’s just that most people won’t really care.

Which means that understanding your audience and getting clarity about what they really do care about will be a very useful insight to help determine what place AI should have in your communication.

AI writing tools

AI writing assistants are all over the place. Although their writing is often bad.

But so is yours when you write the first draft of your text.

The first draft is a huge hurdle for many non-professional writers (and also for quite some professionals, actually). Writing a first draft takes time and (often) way too much over-thinking.

Here’s the thing: You never publish your first draft, do you? It’s what gets your writing started. You edit it. You restructure it. Sometimes you even re-write the whole piece.

The first draft is what made the final piece happen. It’s what triggered your thinking to go deeper and find a way to express what you actually wanted to say.

This is one way how AI writing apps can help people who struggle to come up with the first draft. To get to that first draft more quickly and find out what you actually want to say. You don’t publish the text that the AI produced. You use it to trigger your own writing.

Have you tried AI tools, yet? How? And what for? I would love to hear about your experience.

Not good with words? Let AI take over!

If you still believe that it matters more how you say things than what you say then there might be great news for you. Liam Porr managed to get the AI algorithm GPT-3 to write a blog article that made it to the top ranked post on the website Hacker News.

The topic? Typical self-help stuff: “Feeling unproductive? Maybe you should stop overthinking.”

The article can be summarized in one sentence: “Well, if you tend to overthink things then stop overthinking and start creative thinking.”

Porr about what he needed to do: “It’s quite good at making pretty language, and it’s not very good at being logical and rational.” So he picked a popular blog category that doesn’t require rigorous logic: productivity and self-help.

And it is in fact a light read with a conversational tone. The scary part is how this article indeed reads like a lot of the conversion driven articles that put all their effort into getting you to click on the headline and that flood the social networks.

Yet, make no mistake. Computers are good at logic in general. So, this will likely be taken care of sooner or later. What’s still missing in computers is a sense of purpose. The why. The making sense of things part.

What’s lacking in both instances, human written and machine generated versions, is substance.

So, actually, GPT-3 is bad news if saying things nicely is your main focus as a communicator. Computers will probably soon become even better than humans in figuring out how to say things in a way that triggers just the right actions.

If we don’t want to end up in a society that’s filled with nice sounding, but ultimately meaningless content we need to raise the bars. Strive for purpose and for meaning – especially for meaningful content. This includes teaching our audiences so they not only cheer for the beautiful stuff but are also enabled to applaud the meaningful stuff.

Spread the Word

Picture of Dr. Michael Gerharz

Dr. Michael Gerharz