Project Two

People are going to use AI to make change. I am sharing some notes on how I use AI today. And I need your help to collect stories, observations, frustrations from your experiences.

Lighthouse, Chanonry Point

In my last post, I talked about the future of AI being created by the people who use it. I am using AI pretty much every day so I thought it would be interesting to share some of that experience.

Once I started writing this, two things struck me:

• I am still feeling my way but it is clear AI could change the way virtually everything I have experienced in my career is done. That leads me to think I can change the way I do things now and reinvent sunstone as a new type of business. Not sure quite how that might look.

• There is a lack of depth and richness in my understanding of how people are using AI today. The arms length advisor/ NED roles I have put some frustrating distance between me and the coalface.

So I figured the first step would be to learn more about how people are using AI today.

This is not a survey - there are plenty of surveys out there - they average things out to lose all meaning.

Nor is it a forecast/ prediction/ whatever. Yes I am happy to hear how you think things might develop in future but that is secondary.

My aim is to collect stories, observations, frustrations from actual experiences as a user of AI.

If I get enough input, I will find a way to share it with everyone who contributes. Most likely I will not even curate this, simply make it available as a resource.

Please tell me what you are doing with AI, what you see others doing and what you are not doing and why.

I am happy to accept this input in any format by any means. Text, audio, video, images or whatever form is most convenient to you are all fine. Use AI to generate something if that works for you.

For those who like that sort of thing I have set up a short "form" here but again this is not a survey. The questions have no structure and nothing is required.

Or just email me kenny@sunstonecommunication.com, message me in the comments, or book a call to talk it through.

I have even given this a name. For reasons linked to a fun past experience, I am calling it Project Two - maybe I will explain why at some point.

Thanks for your help - read on if you are interested in my experience with AI.

Notes on AI

I am using AI regularly for:

• Image generation - mainly ideogram and the new ChatGPT function - generally having fun with this. My artistic taste is doubtful so maybe what I share is not that great but that is my fault not the AI. Curiously, it seems to struggle more with older styles. So the style of Rembrandt or Breugel is poor but anything from the 20th century onwards is fine.

• Helping me write - ChatGPT. I redraft the responses completely (not necessarily better!!) but it gives me some momentum and a starting point. It is also helpful finding words and phrases when I am struggling. I can do a clunky prompt about my idea and get back some snappy one liners - again not final but helps get me there.

• Some types of searches where I need a decent answer to a question - doesn't work as a default for search.

What about more complex work?:

• I have used ChatGPT DeepResearch a fair bit. It is fantastic at some things I am not very good at. Being thorough, covering all the bases and sources, developing readable and structured long form reports.

• So it gives me plenty of material. But it all has an academic/ Gartner feel to it. That links with a lot of the commentary I have seen. Much of it is from academics who are excited because they believe the output is at the level of a PhD thesis.

• Maybe it is.

• My experience. Few people in business are interested in PhDs. It is much more common to be asked to summarise a complex set of issues surrounding a business decision on a single page. Directionally, business leaders want succinct, relevant, insights. Not deep thinking.

• So how can this capability be used to add real business value?

• I have also used Google NotebookLM a bit. I really like the idea - getting AI to run over a selected set of sources.

• Not sure I have quite figured it out yet. One obstacle is the sources themselves. Using this independently restricts me to sources that are in the public domain.

• That's fine but real business problems are sorted out using lots of internal sources and documentation. I don't mean the specialised IP. It's the notes of meetings, details of current sales figures, buying contracts, HR records and all the other "stuff" that businesses use every day.

• And that is just the stuff that is written down. Workflows and decisions also depend on the knowledge in people's heads. Not everything in business is recorded. That's why consultants put so much value on interviews and just being on client sites.

For completeness, some AI things I am not using:

• Not using agents yet - not really seeing anything that is compelling at this point. Not wholly convinced the concept of agents as currently understood is right.

• Specific example. I will not be using AI for booking trips or meetings. These use cases are popular in demos and PR for some reason. I find it hard to see how or why this could ever work. These are some of the hardest and most personal things. And both typically involve a tricky dynamic between multiple sets of personal preferences.

• I am definitely not using AI to organise my inbox, my filing system or my life. This is just amplifying the aspect of so-called self help I dislike most. It all feels like some kind of masochistic taylorism. Again leverage not productivity is my mindset...or that might just be buzz words for being too lazy.

Thanks for reading