Doing Stuff with AI: Opinionated Midyear Edition

Every six months or so, I write a guide to doing stuff with AI. A lot has changed since the last guide, while a few important things have stayed the same. It is time for an update. This is usually a serious endeavor, but, heeding the advice of Allie Miller, I wanted to start with a different entry point into AI: fun.

Experiencing AI through play

I have given talks to thousands of people about AI, and there are lots of things that I can demo that tend to amaze or worry folks, but there is one thing that never fails to delight: making a song.

So, before you do anything else, go to Suno (which you can also access via Microsoft Copilot) or Udio and make a song. Even if you have done it before, the updated models are so much better, that you should try again. Here, for example, is the modern jazz pop rendition of the abstract to Attention is All You Need, the paper that kicked off Large Language Models. It’s surprisingly catchy. Seriously give it 25 seconds, I have been singing the chorus to myself all day. ...

But if you want another playful audio way to experience the same paper, take a listen to the first entry in Google’s Illuminate demo, which turns papers into NPR-style radio interviews. It is worth a few moments of your time to play one to see how realistic it sounds - the little breaths, pauses, and interactions between the virtual hosts all sell the idea. ...

I know this may not seem particularly profound, but “always invite AI to the table” is the principle in my book that people tell me had the biggest impact on them. ...

If you really want to do research, however, a specialized AI model, Perplexity, may be a better choice, as it has a great interface and specialized tools that are optimized for research. ...

Sees video: As the immediate memory, or context window, of AIs grow, they can start to work directly with videos, keeping an entire video in memory at once. Gemini has a startlingly large context window, and I can give it a 30 minute video of a museum walkthrough and ask it to tell me what happens when, and which moments might appeal to kids. A complex task for humans takes less than a minute for AI and suggests why working with video is something that will have large implications. ...

Read the full story here: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/doing-stuff-with-ai-opinionated-midyear