Forward into the Deluge of November
I'm not talking about the weather
Are you a Centaur or a Cyborg?
If you’re hesitant to begin using generative AI tools at work, you should really read this article from Briana Brownell at DeScript. She distilled a lot of data from a Harvard Business School study about how professional consultants used AI tools. From this data, she created two archetypes, a Centaur and a Cyborg. Centaurs tend to compartmentalize tasks, just like their namesake does with it’s body parts. These are the important human tasks that I can focus on and these are the difficult or time consuming tasks that I can delegate to AI. Cyborgs worked much more intensely with AI tools to refine and collaborate. They used AI on almost every step of the process and they frequently pushed back, asked for more detail, or challenged assumptions to get a more thorough answer. This article will be required reading for my students this week. FYI, Descript is a fantastic AI powered video editing tool.
Why it matters: You will be using AI in your workflow in the near future
Is Your Startup Going to Fail Next Year?
Did you get a new job at some hot new AI startup? Did they tell you how the company actually works? Or are they just recovering Crypto Bros on to their next hustle? If their AI angle is just a ‘Wrapper’ that harnesses and repackages some feature of ChatGPT or a similar engine, then they are very vulnerable to disruption. I’ve seen a dozen variations of this headline in the last few days, “ChatGPT just killed 1000 startups”, because they’ve added the ability to upload and read and have ChatGPT analyze pdf files. This was a key value proposition for several startups who launched based on ChatGPTs lack of being able to do this. This si just a reminder that as the technology evolves really rapidly, Big Tech can wreak havoc in the blink of an eye. Business Insider has a deeper dive.
Why it matters: There is going to be a lot of money pouring into AI startups next year. 90% of them are likely to fail. Choose wisely, or cash the checks quickly.
Google Lets Advertisers Generate Backgrounds
Google just released a tool that lets advertisers generate backgrounds around their product. Theoretically, they could adjust these seasonally or try something different base on analytics data. Facebook and Amazon have also rolled out similar products this year. Read about it on TechCrunch
Via the new, AI-powered Product Studio, merchants and advertisers will be able to leverage text-to-image AI capabilities to create new product imagery for free, simply by typing in a prompt of the image they want to use.
Why it matters: Are you a product photographer or a small time ad producer? Your opportunities are shrinking.
The Shirts Have Arrived! Only $25 Shipped!
Send me a message with your gender choice, size and address. You can just Venmo me when it arrives.
Jakob Neilson Makes Images, Too!
The OG godfather of UX is back with a series of illustrations made in Midjourney that try to go beyond the “robot as AI” stereotype. I read a lot of AI articles every week and I’m really tired of this trend as well. I’m really impressed with what he squeezed out of Midjourney. Check it out.
For The Educators: Teachers in India Use AI
This might not be interesting to everyone, but if your life has an intersection of UX, AI, and eduction you’ll really enjoy this article. I still think that generative AI can save the world and it can have a profound impact on education. Once again, Microsoft takes an impressive stance creating a tool that lets teachers in India create lesson plans in a fraction of the time. Check it out.
Best Practices for AI for UX Designers
This article by Cara Storath helped me realize how impulsive I am while using AI tools. Fortunately I’m just generating images in Midjourney and writing articles for Medium, but she’s working on an AI system to help pilots land a plane during an emergency. While your work is probably not that high profile either, if you work with AI in your UX assignments, you’ll get a lot of value out of How to Design Safe and Trustworthy AI Systems
Nike Metal Basketball
I spent about 30 minutes generating images in Dall-3, 30 minutes cropping and adjusting in Photoshop, 30 minutes editing in Capcut. Audio from Google Test Kitchen.
That’s a wrap! I hope you found this newsletter helpful and you’re learning something new every day. As always, if you’d like me to do a deeper dive an any subject, just send me a message.