The AI Newsletter Frontier
Episode Description:
How is AI reshaping the tech and newsletter industry? Discover this in our latest interview with Liam Lawson, editor-in-chief at AI Tool Report. Lawson shares his journey into AI, influenced by innovations like ChatGPT, and discusses AI's role in simplifying research and storytelling in the newsletter space. He emphasizes the crucial balance between AI's capabilities and human creativity, particularly in ethical content creation and oversight. Exploring the realms of AI in everyday applications and medicine, Lawson also sheds light on the future of AI wearables and consumer technology.
Resources Mentioned:
Full Transcript
Andrew Miller:
[0:01] Hello, and welcome to another episode of AI Unboxed. Today's guest is Liam Lawson.
He has been in tech for over half a decade and is currently the editor-in-chief of AI Tool Report.
Now, if you're in the AI space, you've probably heard of AI Tool Report.
If you haven't, I'm not sure if you're like hiding under a rock or something like that, but it is one of the largest, if not the largest, AI newsletters out there.
With over 490,000 subscribers, they are continuing to expand their footprint and build additional products and services like AI accreditations, a job board, a tool database.
You know, they are literally building the homepage for AI. It's so great to have you here on the show, Liam. How's it going?
Liam Lawson:
[0:48] It's going amazing. I don't know if I could come up with a better introduction myself, honestly. I think you've nailed it on the head there. That was perfect.
Andrew Miller:
[0:56] Okay, great, great, great. Well, then, if there's nothing else on the introductions, then I'll go ahead and just like dive into the first question that I have here.
And it's, you know, what attracted you to the intersection of, and there's a couple things here, right?
So you're not just like an AI, but the intersection of tech, newsletters, which is his own thing, and AI.
Liam Lawson:
[1:16] Yeah, I mean, there's a combination of things in my history and what I've worked in and that kind of attracted me to it.
So for a long time, I was writing online and personal articles on Medium, kind of trying to get into the industry, doing a bit of copyright here and there.
And so that's always appealed to me massively.
And then I've been in tech for a long time as well.
So about half a decade and worked in cryptocurrency as a consultant for a while and graduated with like a marketing and enterprise degree and so i was being interested in that side of things and then, when chat gpt was released around two years ago and then all these different tools started to come out i started to play with them of my own accords and and at the time i started a newsletter of myself exploring specifically the intersection of ai and startups and because those are two of like my massive interest, AI being one of the new ones and startups being a lifelong one for me.
And through that, I found my boss and the founder of AI Tool Report, Martin, and we connected from there. And then the rest is history, I guess.
Andrew Miller:
[2:20] Very cool. Very cool. Very cool, man. And now you have your finger on the pulse.
I mean, you're the editor in chief of AI Tool Report. It's all things, you know, AI.
It's a hard question because I just want to like massively ask, like, how is AI revolutionizing the industry?
You know, because you're looking at a lot of industries. But like if we narrow down a little bit on like the tech space, you know, how would you say or even even just newsletter?
Because that I'm very interested in newsletters and how, you know, that's developed and built out like that.
So it's open but how would you say that AI is revolutionizing you know tech and maybe even a second question there but like the newsletter industry specifically.
Liam Lawson:
[3:02] Hmm I think we'll start with tech so if we look at last year last year's being kind of coined as the year of AI and it's one of the first years that AI companies themselves or tech companies have actually outspent VCS in terms of investing any I and so the amount of like investment and funding that's actually went into that has been huge and then again finger on the pulse something we're covering this week and it's starting as of tomorrow is ces 2024 um and there's already announcements coming out about that so lg for example and they are introducing an entire ecosystem where it's in your house and your car and everything else and they're trying to and videos trying to bring ai into your personal computers and your smartphones samsung's bringing bringing out AI and their S24 range.
So it's one of those things that's revolutionizing every single aspect.
I think right now what we're seeing is AI becoming more useful and more intuitive.
So when it was first released, you had to be good at knowing how to prompt chat GPD, for example.
And you still need to know how to do that. You need to know how to ask it questions in the right way. way.
But now we're trying to see these companies bring it to the masses and the secret or the key to that is intuition.
[4:24] In terms of newsletters themselves, I wasn't in the industry before that.
I think it's an odd way, it's an odd thing because it lowers that barrier to entry of producing a newsletter, right?
Because you can use AI to structure some of your research, to take these massive documents and PDFs and simplify them into terms that myself and yourself can understand.
So I'd say it lowers that barrier to entry and makes the process of writing a newsletter easier and with that you're going to get a lot of people producing newsletters themselves we can see that with the growth of beehive um but i think the thing that separates a good newsletter from a bad newsletter is that touch of humanity that touch human um that person's personality um and i'd say something we're particularly good at is drawing together threads that are maybe weeks or months apart part.
So say for example, we cover a release from AMD and they're releasing a new chip.
We can draw that back through our own memory to a story from two weeks ago or a month ago about Nvidia and how that competition relates to each other.
And that's not something that AI is too good at yet.
So, yep, AI lowers that barrier to entry, but there's still that gap and that's based on the human.
Andrew Miller:
[5:48] Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really, really good point.
And it's applicable not just in the newsletter space, but in the larger tech space as well, right?
People have this concept that, you know, the machines are taking over the world, and they're like coming out there and that AI is going to be able to like do everything.
But the thing is, AI can only do and the language learning models and the models and neural networks and everything that are built behind them can only do so much. It's still a tool, right? So it's learning from everything.
And then it can start going down weird rabbit holes. If you go to like specific like language learning models, not necessarily like things that are physically going inside of, you know, wearables and things like that.
But if you're prompting something and you start giving it weird prompts and it starts remembering those historical things, it just can turn out worse than what it would have come up with at the very, very beginning.
So you might get a really, really bad output there.
So it still has to be very like human led and like that intuition there.
And you use the language learning model as a tool to help you with like coming up with ideas creativity to simplify things like you said like break down this context and simplify it.
[6:54] But even some of the the models now when you say simplify it sometimes it gets too over simplified it's like you miss like everything that i that i put out there so you have to have that human editorial you know uh aspect built into it and so like you said there might be a lot of newsletters that are popping up, but how long are people going to sit there and read them when it's like, well, this isn't really that innovative.
This isn't really telling me anything that I maybe didn't already know.
Yeah, you're curating it, but you're not curating it the proper way.
So it's really, really interesting to see that barrier and there'll be that explosion and then it'll like simmer down, I'd say to the true, you know, I don't know, the people that are truly dedicated to this space and jumping in, like AI Tool Report.
Liam Lawson:
[7:44] I think it's going to be, consolidation, both in terms of newsletters and in terms of AI companies too.
It's going to be a year of consolidation.
Andrew Miller:
[7:55] Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, it's also hard work, right?
So if you're putting out a good newsletter and you're doing it like even once a week, I know, I know you guys send it out like almost like every day.
Uh, if, if not every day, that's a lot of work to go out there and just like find the material to come up things.
So even if you're using an AI to help you on that backend, And it still takes a good chunk of time.
And that commitment factor, we all know, you know, that's the 1%, right? It's the 1% that actually stays with it.
The overnight, you know, success story that took 10 years to get there.
So there's only going to be a few people that actually stick with it and everything.
So really, really, really good points, man.
Liam Lawson:
[8:34] I mean, I think that's one thing as well. You were saying about how it's a little bit more difficult than what it seems on the surface.
And I think one part of that is to be really, in terms of having your finger on the pulse and then presenting that to your audience, you need to be as up-to-date as possible.
And for example, ourselves and other big players in space, the Rundown Superhuman, we all release between around 7 and 8 a.m., which means if you want to have the most up-to-date content, you need to be up at 6 a.m.
To make sure you've got that content ready for that morning as well.
So it's definitely a commitment.
Andrew Miller:
[9:06] Absolutely. Absolutely. Could you maybe share a real-world example of maybe like a traditional process that you've seen that has been improved, you know, by AI?
Liam Lawson:
[9:17] A real-world example? Honestly, it seems, I don't know the word for it, but Exemble has actually been great in terms of improving my process for things.
So, for example, when I was on calls before with people, whether that was on a sales call or meeting calls for this, I would either write down manually notes in my laptop or on a journal there for me.
But Exembly coming into those meetings for me and then having action items at the end has actually been a great factor.
So I just say that in terms of like having a personal assistant, that's usually a physical person that's there.
But AI has just kind of streamlined that for us. And I've said this to you and I say this to a lot of people, there's a thousand AI tools out there and we might only use on a day-to-day basis four or five and Exemble is kind of one of them for us.
Andrew Miller:
[10:10] Awesome. Awesome. Well, just letting everybody know, I did not pay for that placement.
Liam Lawson:
[10:15] I mean.
Andrew Miller:
[10:18] I am very biased to Zimbly. I love Zimbly. And it's really, really great to hear that, you know, it, it does.
And I can spend a lot of time talking about how it's helping and it takes, you know, real world things like you were talking about, like meeting, meeting notes, scheduling, all these things off, off the plate.
But I think you did a great job there. So I'm not gonna you know.
Liam Lawson:
[10:38] Harp on that too much appreciate.
Andrew Miller:
[10:40] It man that's awesome.
Liam Lawson:
[10:41] Of course um.
Andrew Miller:
[10:43] Let's let's look at like some additional real world applications you know could you maybe describe, you know an interesting ai application and i guess i'm gonna have to push to the side zimbly you know we've already talked about that but uh an interesting ai application that you maybe recently like worked on or used or maybe even just like talked about in the newsletter.
Liam Lawson:
[11:05] Letter would you be able to define real world real world for me do you mean a physical tangible object and junior process yeah.
Andrew Miller:
[11:14] Great question so it could be either so just real world as in we're using it here in and on tech uh maybe in physical life just something that is interesting uh from an ai standpoint.
Liam Lawson:
[11:26] Yeah i mean this may be a bit of a cop-out answer and it's just a personal thing to me but google assistant i found to be incredibly useful um and i know that they're beginning to actually are they're talking about maybe integrating chat gpt on android devices um or, upgrading google assistant with um bard or gemini pro um on the the new google pixel model so that's just something i began to use more and more and if i'm listening to song on spotify i might say hey google like this song on my spotify playlist i can save it for later so just, utilizing those voice commands to make my life a bit easier and it's something that i used to think was a little gimmicky um but i now actually kind of use on a day-to-day basis so i would probably be my i'm just kind of relating to myself the most that's probably something that i use my personal life the most in terms of usable ai for.
Andrew Miller:
[12:19] Sure for sure i remember when like voice commands demands and prompts were just coming out.
And it was the thing I was like, no, you know, even though I'm in the tech, I'm in tech, I don't really want to deal with it. That sounds like you said, like gimmicky.
But then my, my, uh, mother-in-law, I think it was like a few years after the tech had come out and everything got me like an echo, you know, dot for, for Christmas.
And I'm like, okay, fine. You know, I'm going to plug it in. I'm going to, I'm going to check it it out and try it and I said okay play music and it played some classical song and I just had this lightbulb moment because I'd never done that before and it's just like wow you know this is this was actually really cool and of course it had this like crescendo I don't know if it was like the Debusy or something like that playing and I was just like, This is a moment, you know, this is really, really cool.
I mean, it's progressed a lot since then. And now everybody's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it does still have some great functionality.
Liam Lawson:
[13:17] 100%, 100%, more useful than I thought it would be. And it's only going to get better from here, which is exciting.
Andrew Miller:
[13:23] Yeah. Now, specifically to you, and maybe within the realm of AI tool report, or maybe you're working on like your own project, is there an AI assisted application or something that you've recently been working on?
Liam Lawson:
[13:37] AI-assisted application in terms of us developing a SaaS product that's got AI included within it.
Andrew Miller:
[13:45] Yeah, that or something else similar that has some sort of AI functionality.
Liam Lawson:
[13:50] Yeah, I mean, one thing we are developing is a job board which is set to release, next month to start February.
And it's going to kind of be released as a beta to get people on board let them kind of try and play about with it um and the way we want to approach it is just have everyone kind of give us feedback from that and we want to integrate integrate um ai features within that i think as i said before there's lots of different ai companies that do different things right so you might get one that does um ai resumes and cvs you might get one that helps you with writing a cover letter you might get one that helps you scour a job board and our kind of plan with integrating AI within that is to have the entire job boards on both the client and the employer side of things and have AI integrated throughout that entire process.
So an employer can go out and streamline that process.
You can go out and get help with your CV. You can automatically rule out a lot of applications.
You can get tips on how to write a better CV or a better cover letter.
Better and so yeah that that's our kind of plan is to have it holistically included it's it's going to take a while because we're going to be building everything on user feedback and but that is the plan for the future.
Andrew Miller:
[15:06] That's awesome that's awesome and i can see that being extremely useful i mean especially when you know every other week in tech you know you you see, this company shuttered or this company just laid off this you know huge percentage of people So job boards, especially in this like up and coming space are vital, I think, to helping get people like back on their feet really quickly.
What would you say were some of the challenges? And I know you're still working through it and building it up, but some of the challenges of bringing that job board to life?
Liam Lawson:
[15:36] Yeah i mean luckily we've got um a great developer team so shout out powerhouse um and michael at powerhouse i'd love to put a link in somewhere they are an awesome team of developers to help us, um work on it but i think for us is just to make everything as intuitive as possible like i'm one of those people i wouldn't call myself as particularly smart and i can love hopping onto a call and be like okay i'm kind of dumb explain this to me in simple terms and so my idea of building product products is like make them as easy and as intuitive as possible so it's going into the minutiae of that job board and being like okay what are these tiny little things that maybe you wouldn't notice on a first glance but are going to make every step easier for every person that accesses this so um it's figuring out what they are and being able to implement that that through our team, which are, who are amazing.
Andrew Miller:
[16:29] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, I'd actually push back and say that that's very, very smart. You know, that's very smart.
You're thinking about the user. You're starting without building too many technical, you know, bells and whistles in there that's going to confuse them.
And when you do that, and, you know, I know developers and I love them to death, but sometimes they want to put everything in there.
They're like, no, it's not ready to ship. I want to do this.
Oh, and this is another great idea.
And this is another great idea. So something that should have shipped, you know, in Q1 doesn't ship until Q4 and it has all these additional things and functionalities in there.
And so when the user jumps on it, they're like, I don't know what to do.
You know, like where do I click?
I'm sure there's all these things, but I don't want to be like a sales force and spend six plus months trying to figure out how to create a dashboard or to get ramped up on there.
So I think that's a very, very smart approach and something that sometimes the like, you know, move fast and break things, you know, motto could, could, you know, be helpful here. So definitely, definitely.
Now looking at AI, you know, as a whole and whatever use case you want to like jump into it, you know, what ethical considerations do you think are essential in, you know, AI work?
And maybe your ai work you know.
Liam Lawson:
[17:47] I mean we could go into so many different rabbit holes and that's like i'll start our stock firm from our one like for example like us as a newsletter we're covering massive developments and they're happening every single day so for us in terms of like if we use, for example we use ai in our process to simplify large documents but we need to then go through, and proofread them and make sure there's no bias included make sure it's correct factual information and so using ai in that process like it kind of exposes you to those things because, it can hallucinate sometimes and especially i don't know if you used bard in the past but it was, beyond useless with hallucinating it would just make up information out of thin air.
[18:32] And so that's i would say from like our perspective there we could hop into the complete opposite side of the pool and go into the nature of reality and consciousness and the possibility of AGI and should we have breaks on this and who should be overseeing it um which if we've been keeping up with the news um we had the whole fiasco with Sam Altman um last month that has firing and there was all these theories coming about about Project QSTAR which was supposedly lead to this underground development and they'd secretly achieved AGI.
So it's, yeah, there's a lot of concerns and it's going to be whether we have the right unbiased, un-incentivized regularity boards and being able to actually oversee the development of AI.
So the ethical concerns moves into every single space, anyone that's building with AI, anyone that's involved with AI, there's ethical concerns somewhat.
Andrew Miller:
[19:32] For sure, for sure. I think just for our listeners to make sure they're aware of some of the terminology, would you mind explaining a little bit about what AGI is?
Liam Lawson:
[19:41] Artificial General Intelligence is the concept that it will become sentient somewhat and be able to make its own decisions outwith human input.
Put so at that point we would no longer be in complete control of artificial intelligence because we'd achieved agi yeah.
Andrew Miller:
[20:07] And i wonder like is that a bad thing i mean is is that what we're kind of trying to build to and i'm sure they're they'll well i wonder if we should make it better than humans uh i don't want to go down that route because there's like so many things that if you You actually use decision matrixes and everything.
It's like human is not logical.
You know, Dan Ariely wrote the entire book, you know, Predictably Irrational.
And in that, it's showing from like a behavioral economist perspective, we don't make the right decisions.
You know, the data shows us we should do this, but we typically don't because we're very emotionally driven.
Driven so having an ai that is you know makes really logical decisions i just wonder if it's good or bad to have like the emotional aspect built into there and i guess that that's a whole like whole another rabbit hole yeah.
Liam Lawson:
[20:57] It's a whole kind of worms honestly you ever see the movie um i robot with will smith.
Andrew Miller:
[21:01] Oh of course of course we just we just.
Liam Lawson:
[21:03] Don't want to end up in that situation where we've got will smith having to save the world for us again.
Andrew Miller:
[21:07] Yeah yeah matrix right Even back before that, taking care of everything.
Liam Lawson:
[21:13] I guess it really depends on the incentives that we align and build into the AI.
It depends on what our goal is as the human race.
Do we want to become an interplanetary species as the goal to survive?
Because if the goal was just survival and we just programmed that into an AI, I think they would destroy all of humanity and then just go on their own little road.
If that was generally the goal to last for as long as possible, humanity would be a hindrance to that.
Andrew Miller:
[21:46] This is going down a path that I think is super interesting and could be very, very philosophical.
But I'm going to reel us back a little bit.
Liam Lawson:
[21:55] Probably a good idea.
Andrew Miller:
[21:56] Yeah, yeah. But it's another question on ethical consideration.
But have you faced a specific ethical dilemma, maybe linked to AI, that you could share?
Liam Lawson:
[22:10] I would probably just go back to writing a newsletter daily like that's been my life and for the past nine months so it's just not I had the bias I'll probably go into a little bit more and and, they found in the past that like certain certain ai models would lean in certain political directions so you might get ones that lean more left based on the training data ones that might lean more right on the training data and so it's trying to remain unbiased and provide a holistic overview of the space and without taking on and whatever you're being fed from that so um i'd say that's the kind of biggest ethical concern that we face on a day-to-day basis is not to um, Struggling for the word here, but not to take on that bias and then present it to readers.
Andrew Miller:
[22:58] That makes sense. And I think that's something just from like a journalistic standpoint, right?
You're always trying to be as every news station ever publishes, like we're fair and biased right down the middle.
So and like, yeah, usually they aren't.
So it's great to see that aspect being built into here and also like looking at the AI stuff because it was programmed by humans. And then there we innately have biases built into us.
And so sometimes that gets, unfortunately, like put in the code base.
And so as it builds on top of each other, using the innate biases that we have, it just gets that it becomes the output that gets thrown out there.
So I think having that human aspect, even though we have the bias again, having a human by perspective on there helps reel it back a little bit.
So super, super important. Jordan.
What would you say is a groundbreaking, but maybe underutilized AI tech in the, in general.
Liam Lawson:
[23:58] Exembly. Okay.
Andrew Miller:
[24:01] I'll take that one. That's a good one.
Liam Lawson:
[24:03] I wouldn't see Exembly, definitely.
I think people don't realize how intuitive it actually is.
As I said before, a million AI tools out there, people will only use four or five.
Exembly is one of those ones that kind of fit into my workflow really simply.
So yeah, everyone uses ChatGPT.
I'm sure there's a few other tools out there that people use but yeah Exembly's been great for that.
I wouldn't see underutilized but I would say that people, I'm taking this in a little bit of a different direction, maybe people just don't know about the developments that are happening but one of the things that excites me most is the intersection of AI and kind of medicine and med tech as well.
There's so many developments happening with like massive foundations, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and google have got an entire division dedicated to it and and there's just there's so much happening right there right now and they're discovering new molecules they're discovering cures to different diseases and i'm just really excited to see where that goes in the next decade.
Andrew Miller:
[25:10] Absolutely absolutely i mean when you have these models that can process so much so quickly when even if you have the best experts in the world you know you just can't human cognitively you you know, comprehend all that, building this into, you know, our medical profession is something that really, you know, is going to change our lives in the future.
Hopefully we have more, you know, centenarians than ever before, you know, that'd be, that'd be great.
You know, we'll, we'll see, we'll see.
Flipping it a little bit, where would you say AI maybe falls short in your field?
Or, you know, if there is a specific thing, how do you overcome those limitations? expectations?
Liam Lawson:
[25:51] I mean I hate to sound like a broken record but it's just it's the intuition um I think people assume that AI can do everything and it just can't um right now it's not at that level um and people shouldn't shouldn't be too scared of AI right now in terms of it taking like their creative roles because it's not good enough for that um our ability our innate ability as human to draw threads together that are fluidly floating about our heads as something that's very human right now.
So yeah, being able to draw those connections is great.
Andrew Miller:
[26:27] Now, if we take a bit of a future outlook, maybe the next, I mean, things are moving so quickly, but maybe in the next three, five years, maybe longer, however you want to go about it.
But But what would you say are emerging AI trends that you're maybe most excited about?
Liam Lawson:
[26:47] I'm excited about AI wearables and see where they go.
I think that's become, we've seen Humane come out with their AI pin last year.
We're going to see it integrated more watches, more PCs, more smartphones.
So people are trying to bring this to mass consumer technology.
So I'm excited to see where that goes in terms of our wearables and stuff and what people end up using it for.
I've never have you ever seen anyone where the AI pet in real life I.
Andrew Miller:
[27:18] Have not no.
Liam Lawson:
[27:19] No me neither I'm not sure if it's just a thing in the u.s.
Because obviously they've done a big release there you need to be specifically in Los Angeles or San Fran to be able to see people walking around with them but yeah I'd say yeah wearables I'm really excited to just see how that unfolds and see whether it actually kicks on with people and our people just like see it it as a gimmick kind of like how people saw the the echo hub and stuff as a gimmick at the start but eventually caught on um i'm really i'm really curious to see how that plays out oh.
Andrew Miller:
[27:54] For sure for sure i mean there was you know the the term you know internet of things that was everywhere for a while you know that's like if you're not in the internet of things you're not even doing it right you need to figure out you know what's coming out next and that term i'm sure it's still floating there, but it's really like died down. It's like, it's just wearables, right?
It's wearables and how that's being incorporated in the tech behind it.
So figuring out what's coming next and like the pin that you talked about and yeah, there's just going to be so many things that you're going to walk around is no longer just going to be this thing on the internet and, you know, floating in the ether.
It's really in front of you, you know, and it's showing up.
It's not really a wearable, but like tesla and its robot right that.
Liam Lawson:
[28:37] I know it.
Andrew Miller:
[28:38] Keeps going through evolutions but that thing is just getting better and better with every new release it's it's mind-blowing.
Liam Lawson:
[28:45] Yeah i mean yesterday i think it was yesterday the day before and brett adcock and i forget what company he's from but they released a video of their ai road uh ai robot um making a cup of coffee figure that's what the the company's called um so they released a video on twitter i'm sure we can put this in the show notes as well um of their robot coming in and making a cup of coffee and they're a startup that's existed for like i think 18 months it's either 8 or 18 months so like super new but they've already got like fully human looking robots running around um making making cups of coffee so i think that's a good thing you touched on there actually is like as they become more human and like indistinguishable from humans especially how inter human and robot or humanoid relationships will develop.
I think we'll generally see that within the next like decade or two that those relationships will be 10, 20% of the population will be human and AI.
Andrew Miller:
[29:49] It's interesting. It's super interesting. I mean, I'm thinking, of course, the old school movie, The Jetsons, right?
And you already have the robot floating around and all the other movies and everything. But it's really amazing.
We're living in the future now, you know, and everything that's happening here.
So being in the place that we are, in the space that we are, and seeing how things are transitioning, it's just an exciting time to be here.
Speaking of that relationship, how do you see the relationship between AI and human expertise maybe evolving over the next few years?
Liam Lawson:
[30:23] I'd love if there was a way to customize the newsletter more to individuals.
So, for example, if we could have an AI integrated in there somewhere, someone could kind of set the preferences and the AI could filter that newsletter through for that person and kind of present.
So, say, for example, we have the news stories first, then we have our trending tools, and then we have the prompt engineering and so on.
And say, for example, the AI could reorder that based on the individual, have a conversation with them about the newsletter.
Oh I don't understand this term or this paragraph here I'd like to have more context on this and the AI could go in and search the web and I'd love to see more like personalization and customization, and I'm not sure how possible that is or how long that's going to take especially because you have to you have to work with email at this level which is if you've ever worked with email lists and all all the settings on that, it's inconceivably mundane and old and complex.
So whether AI can integrate with that and provide people with individual customer experiences, I'm not sure, but that is something that I'd love to see.
Andrew Miller:
[31:33] Yeah, yeah, that just opened up so many, you know, possibilities and thoughts, you know, in my head.
I mean, that's truly moving like from a marketer standpoint to that real one to one personalization.
The messaging that every marketing tool has been saying for the past decade, whatever that, oh, we can do one to one, you're really going to interact with them.
And it's like, you jump into and it's like, it's still not that one to one, there's still like all these sequences and manual work and all this you have to do.
But if you build the AI in there or there's like a tool that goes in there and understands every single person's, you know, interaction with that newsletter, like what parts are they skimming? What parts are they looking at?
And then reorders that every time, almost like an A-B test, right?
Reorders that every time to like what their user behavior is and then gives them that.
And you like can determine they're going to read this. They're going to read this.
They want more content of this and then scrapes it and really makes it you know tailored to that person uh that would be freaking phenomenal you also have to like consider you know like gdpr, and like privacy things and jumping into there all those but having a tool that did that would be would be really really cool yeah.
Liam Lawson:
[32:47] I'd love to see something that especially if i understood understood um the context as well like if it had a larger enough context window to understand, months and months of interactions and we're able to personalize experience based on that and i think it would really change the game.
Andrew Miller:
[33:04] Absolutely um now this is in an ideal state uh but if it could plug into other platforms you know for like a digital body language you know mapping to figure out, okay, just like paid ads does and everything like that.
You see them on LinkedIn, they interact with this stuff and all that, and you get all that rich data, but you don't have to sit there and filter it as, you know, manually, you can get the recommendations sent out to you as opposed to, well, this is cool. They interacted with all this stuff.
What do I do with this? Maybe I should like switch this. It's like, no, it actually gives you the insight and recommendations and can handle that.
That would be, that would be like next level phenomenal. You know, what's a lesson that you've learned in your career that you wish maybe you knew earlier?
Liam Lawson:
[33:51] I'd say, I mean, this might not.
Pertain to everyone but my experience with working for people in the past um i had a job and with a coffee roaster in glasgow for a while worked for a cryptocurrency um company.
[34:10] And worked in kind of different places in australia and i'd always had bosses that never let me run with things they never let me kind of go off on my own intuition follow my nose find projects grow them monetize them stuff like that and at a certain point i started believing that um maybe like i wasn't going to achieve the things i want to achieve or like i wasn't capable of them and i came into this position i met martin we established a good relationship and the way that he likes to work and i like to work is that he gave me the ability to just be an individual and go after things and go and do it i'd say don't judge all those past experiences um based on based on what they wear there's always going to be someone out there that kind of gels with you the most and works with you the most so um don't cast that shadow on the kind of future opportunities as well like there is something out there that's perfect for your skill set and you just need to go and find that and then another thing i just like to add on is that i I think in terms of finding the right people or applying for the right jobs, I'd say go obscure with it.
[35:22] I spent a long time applying to jobs through traditional LinkedIn or just sending them a message on that at a bare minimum.
Minimum um and the way i got in this current role was through finding martin on twitter and then sending him kind of a resume of my work of my own newsletter of the podcast i was running as well so be a little bit obscure with it be a little bit different and because people appreciate when you've got that ambition you're kind of willing to show it.
Andrew Miller:
[35:51] 100 100 great great advice um if if we if we move into maybe you know recommendations you know for people that are interested in AI you know to read of course AI tool report but are there any other you know maybe go to I don't know maybe not newsletters but like books resources videos that you would you know recommend.
Liam Lawson:
[36:17] Look we'll go into the other newsletters as well like the rundown and superhuman are great they're two of our kind of biggest to the other biggest me I newsletters in the space and they're awesome and both Rowan and Zane do great coverage and of what of what they're doing I'd say, best way to get like a contextual understanding of what's happening in the space is just immerse yourself through linkedin through twitter follow a bunch of people anytime you see a term you don't understand google that watch a youtube video on it just like follow your curiosity and and with that you will find an aspect of ai that interests you the most and maybe writing with ai and maybe be building models with ai it could be anything but follow your kind of curiosity and just like people underestimate the the power of constantly being in that space like if you're checking your phone or your laptop for an hour a day of just like what's happening yeah who are the main players who are the characters and who are the companies what are they building that stuff just floats into your head you don't even need to actively learn so i'd say passively learn first first of all.
And then once you've found that kind of aspect of AI that interests you most, at that point, have a look for YouTube videos, have a look for courses on Coursera or whatever else, and look for those kind of more fine-tuned educational resources after that.
Andrew Miller:
[37:42] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, I love that. Follow your curiosity.
I think that's brilliantly phrased and it makes sense, right?
You find the things that you're passionate about. You're passively ingesting the information, but certain things just ring in your head like, I really want to learn that. I really want to know more.
And so you just, you keep following that. And whenever you're learning something that you want to learn and you're interested in, it's not work, right?
It's something that is fun and it's making you a better person and you're enjoying your life more by ingesting this knowledge so follow your curiosity I'm I'm gonna share that with my team you know because I love that, What would you say is the, like shifting gears a little bit, what would you say is the moonshot project or future for, it could be you or if you're thinking like AI tool report, which I know you're like deep in, what would you say the moonshot is for them?
Liam Lawson:
[38:42] Moonshot for us become the homepage for AI. Like for us, we are trying to build the best, most intuitive ecosystem.
We want to be able to cover media. So you got all your resources from us and we want to be able to help you apply to jobs to get into the industry and we're building, accreditations which are releasing in early March that we can talk about and to get people trained up on how to use AI just anytime someone thinks about AI we want them to think of us and we want to be able to provide like the best free resources for them to use and we're also working on obviously Obviously, the GPT store is releasing very soon and we're working on our kind of like own AI SaaS projects as well to help you simplify things.
And I can't reveal too much on that right now, but that will come out very soon.
So just give you all of the tools that you need to learn, to use, to utilize, to grow and to become employed or to work in AI.
Andrew Miller:
[39:41] Awesome. Awesome. I love that. And I think one of the biggest things there that you mentioned on is most of this is free. You know, I know that you have a community and people pay, you know, to a small amount, you know, to get to be part of that, but they get all this added value there.
But the vast majority of the information that you're aggregating, that you're writing, that you're leading in is completely free for people to look at, which is like, it's insane.
I mean, because you could be charging, you know, hundreds, thousands of dollars for some of these courses, these accreditations, which are, which are out there.
So it's, it's, it's awesome, man. It's awesome what you guys are putting out.
Liam Lawson:
[40:15] Another thing I'd put in there, I know we're on a podcast just now, but Arturo and our creative director just recently launched their own podcast as well. So we've got the first two episodes on Spotify.
So again, we're building that ecosystem, whether it's maybe we'll produce YouTube videos in the future.
And we've obviously got the socials, we've got the newsletter, we've now got audio.
So and all those different touch points. So whatever your kind of preferred method of learning, like we have a resource for you.
Andrew Miller:
[40:43] Absolutely. And what's the podcast show name?
Liam Lawson:
[40:45] So it's AIToolReportLive. So you just type that into Spotify, that'll come up.
Andrew Miller:
[40:50] Awesome, awesome. Well, it's really been a pleasure having you on the show.
How can our listeners follow you, your work?
Liam Lawson:
[41:00] Yeah i mean first things first i'd say go to the newsletter itself so we're on linkedin and then we use use the the website through beehive so it's just aitoolreport.beehive.com, um in terms of myself i'm on linkedin just under liam lawson if you type in liam lawson yeah i tell report not to be confused with there is a slightly more famous liam lawson he's a I think he's a 21-year-old F1 driver from New Zealand.
So anytime I type in my name, I get this rather handsome blonde man also that just appears before myself.
So I've got some work to do to rank above him. But yeah, you can find us on LinkedIn at Liam Lawson, AITO Report.
Andrew Miller:
[41:44] Awesome, awesome. I love that. Before we close out the show, are there any final words or any words of wisdom that you want to share?
Liam Lawson:
[41:52] Words of wisdom? um i would just say i spoke to a lot of people so i'm traveling and kind of doing the the digital nomad thing and i speak to a lot of people that are um wanting to get their kind of first job or looking for their their first project trying to get into role and the thing that i say to everyone is just start something of your own doesn't matter what it is start a podcast and start writing online and start producing content for free message your favorite influencers and be like i'd love to produce some graphics for you start an instagram on poetry and start writing and p things on pieces of paper sellotaping them to random posts taking pictures of important instagram like it doesn't matter what it is start some sort of project of your own that you care hear about and you will be perplexed at the amount of opportunities that leads to.
Andrew Miller:
[42:51] Right, right. Great, great. Definitely words of wisdom, get out there, you know, make it happen, do something, be a creator.
But that's also like a huge differentiator because people just, a lot of times don't stick to it.
I know we talked about that earlier, but it's, if you find something you're passionate about and you put it out there and just stick with it, that becomes a huge selling point because brands are hiring people that have their own brands, you know, that are doing creative, cool stuff because that adds to their own voice without them seeming like this huge corporate no identity you know organization it's like the people behind these organizations is what's really making it so awesome can.
Liam Lawson:
[43:30] I ask one question just.
Andrew Miller:
[43:31] Before we.
Liam Lawson:
[43:31] Hop off of the guests so far of different people working within ai is there any threads that you've noticed between the individuals that you've hosted here.
Andrew Miller:
[43:42] I think there's actually been a lot of of overlap between, you know, Hannah Recker, who was talking about building kind of like the content machine that they have at Coefficient.
And I mean, of course, the newsletter that you're working with, there's a lot of that, you know, they tap into AI as a resource, but it has to be human led.
I think that that was like a really big point that she made.
And their entire strategy is really the human led content creation model with AI as kind of like the assistant to help with a a lot of like the back end and scalable processes.
And then whenever I talk to like Hillary Coover, so she's an expert in like national security, working with, you know, government contractors.
It goes back to like some of the points that she made, you made, Hannah made, and like other individuals I've talked to.
It's that, and she phrased it really, really well.
You have to think of AI and like the different models that are out there and that you input the information on on as if it was a web browser and the way that you're working with it.
So the information that you put in there, it's not private.
And those are her exact words, you know, whenever you're putting in information inside of, you know, ChatGPT, BART, all these other things.
[44:59] That information is not truly private. You know, it's being gathered in the data there.
So I know in recent models, they say, Hey, don't put that person's phone number in there or their exact name.
And there's like warnings now, but in the early days, it wasn't there because people thought, Oh, I'm just typing, you know, it's, it's just locally hosted, you know, whatever, nobody's ever going to see it, but they're taking that.
And even though they anonymize it, it's still being part of like the larger data set and models that they're, that they're using. So you touched on that too with like hallucinations, with privacy concerns.
[45:34] I think that's the biggest thing is that we're trying to get out.
And I think everybody is trying to make known is AI is not an LLM models, everything behind a machine learning.
It's been around for a while. You know, I mean, our founder at Zimbly, you know, he started MarchX and that was, you know, 10 plus years ago.
And that was using, you know, their own proprietary models there to understand conversational AI, you know.
And so with that, it's things are getting better and we're learning a lot, you know, from it.
And we can use it because it's more publicly available than it used to be or publicly accessible.
Possible but there's still those concerns around privacy that you have to to you know know there's still human-led efforts that have to be on top of these because if you just let it run wild those hallucinations those like privacy concerns just you know they they can run rampant so i think that's that's a core theme that i'm noticing i also ask everybody about ethical concerns so it pops up into here intentionally uh but i think that's the biggest thing that that i've been hearing.
Liam Lawson:
[46:41] Awesome. Awesome. That's a good insight.
Andrew Miller:
[46:43] Cool. Cool. Well, again, you know, I really, really appreciate your time, Liam. Thank you so much.
Um, yeah, it was great having you on the show. We'll talk to you later.
Liam Lawson:
[46:52] Thank you for having me. See ya.
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