Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Hello.
[00:00:05] Welcome to Prompting Curiosity, a podcast for the AI curious. No coding background required. I'm your host, Dr. Shantae Cofield, also known as the Maestro, and I created this show to explore what these AI tools actually are. Really, though, are the files in the computer, how to use them, and what they might mean for how we think, work, create, and move through life. Whether you're skeptical, intrigued, or already experimenting, you're in the right place. All that I ask is that you stay curious. All right, let's get into it.
[00:00:38] Hello, hello, hello, my curious people. Welcome to episode 67 of Prompting Curiosity. I am your grateful host, Maestro, and today we're talking about the bigger picture and thinking about the question, are you being ambitious enough with AI? So, full transparency. This episode was 100% inspired by an article that it did some huge numbers on X. Uh, for its worth, I don't be hanging out over on X, but my good friend K, he does. Um, and he sent it to me and I was like, oh, okay, I'm gonna read this. Um, the article is titled how to be More Ambitious. A Tutorial for Humans with Models. It is an eight minute read. It is written by Felix Reisberg, and he is, uh, an engineering manager at Anthropic. Um, and he has led engineering, uh, for Claude, Claudia, AI cowork, Claudia, Claude, Code Desktop. All this to say, like, he works in the things. Um, the article is good, but honestly, sometimes I feel like these pieces, they just be doing the most and like, they're kind of like.
[00:01:37] I don't say that they're hard for me to follow, but sometimes there's just like so much in there and it's like, okay, like, I feel like this could have been fewer words, um, but with this one, I felt like that. But the basic premise to me is sound and even just like the, the kind of title is enough. Um, and the fact that K sent it to me and he was like, we need to be more ambitious. And I was like, all right, game on. Um, and it inspired me to, To.
[00:02:03] To. To be more ambitious and try some new stuff. And it got the old. The old wheels turning. So, you know, are we being ambitious enough with AI? Honestly, I don't think so. Right. And in fact, I know. So when I say we, I'm speaking about, like, you and me, not like the crazy people that are like, it's going to kill us in 10 years. I'm like, maybe slow down, then be less ambitious.
[00:02:21] Um, but for the average user, there's more that we can do. Right? I'm not sure if I said this in last week's episode or the one before that. I'd be talking a lot. Um, I am not even sure what I've updated all of you with. With. I did. I proposed that, um, I missed that proposed. Sent the proposal for the website. I got it. I built the website. Like that project is actually done.
[00:02:40] Um, it came out phenomenal. Like it was just a. From beginning, start to end, beginning to end. It was just such a fun thing for me to do.
[00:02:49] Um, just like such a fun thing. I really would love to get into more of this and doing more of these kind of like short lived websites where they, they go up for a month or two and then take them down. Um, but uh, the. I built the whole thing with, with the help of Claude, cloud design and cloud code and you know, deployed it on Vercel and just used AI for the whole thing. And you know, y', all, this is not the same AI of 2023. Right. It's not the same AI of last year.
[00:03:20] Right. People really do love to lean on the argument that AI can't do that or AI sucks at that. And honestly, you know, when I hear this, to me, what they're highlighting are people who aren't great at uh, using AI, which is fine, right? But it really bears repeating. It's worth stating that the AI of present day has become capable as hell. It is so incredibly capable, especially with these kinds of tasks.
[00:03:46] Right. I will say that I think it, you know, speaking of these kinds of, kinds of tasks, I think it still falls short when it comes to personal writing and truly creative tasks. But it's getting there. And perhaps what I see and what I produce with it is honestly just a product of me not being ambitious enough with it. Which is fine because I'm like, I don't need it to like write stuff for me. Um, but you know, in that same breath maybe you're hearing that and being like, what the fuck? My sure. Like why do you want AI to be as good as humans? And one, I didn't say that. Um, because that's not where my head is at at all. Right? My head is, is at. And you know, the place where my head's at and where it's always been is just thinking about all the shit that AI can do for me that I don't enjoy doing.
[00:04:23] I under the repetitive tasks that it could just like take off my plate and just allow me to do more of the stuff that I really love. Right. And the fact of the matter that like it can do those things. Well, in last week's episode, I discussed a term called abstraction.
[00:04:38] And abstraction means, speaks to, uh, hiding the details of how something works behind a simpler way of using it. Right? So you can just work at the level without worrying about or handling the steps underneath. Right. Think about it as driving a car. Like you don't know what's going on underneath there. Even just the comparison from like driving a car, driving an automatic to driving versus driving a manual. Even with the manual, you have to do like more layers there. Changing the gears.
[00:05:02] When you're in an automatic, you just push the gas, right? But if you really want to think about abstraction, like, you don't know what happens when you, when you press the gas and you don't have to know, right? Uh, it doesn't matter. It's just like, push the gas, go faster, simple. That is where we're headed towards, where largely where we're at in many ways when it comes to, to AI, Right. I think many of us are still living in last year's models. We're still living in 2023 models, you know, where we had to concern ourselves with all of the details under the hood if we wanted a decent output. And even then the output wasn't great, like even just a year ago. You know, you go back to my older episodes. I'm really teaching people about prompting and being like, on the one hand it's like, doesn't matter as much, but like, here's, here's certain things to pay attention to, like that that you include within this. And a lot of it was like the steps that you wanted that you want the AI to take.
[00:05:48] Right. Uh, and because of that, we have built in friction that stops us from trying to do more with AI or even just trying to do things that we tried in the past but maybe didn't work so well. And we're like, no, I'm not gonna do it. It didn't work. Right. Uh, because all we can think about is the effort that we gave before and that failed outcome, when in reality we can be more ambitious. Right? AI is way more capable than it used to be. And what's crazy, and maybe, you know, maybe it's a good thing, maybe it's a bad thing. I don't know. Is that because of that, because of that abstraction, we can actually say less to AI and get a better output than we ever did in the past? Right. We can really, at this point just focus on what we want as opposed to being so detailed about how to get that outcome and what the AI needs to do. And then we just let AI do its thing. We're like, hey, here's the outcome that I want. Yes, show it examples of that outcome. But you can just do that and then be like, okay, make this, do this and it's. And it can do it. Right? Uh, I said this in one of the episodes. But per Boris Cherney, right, He's the creator of Cloud, the co creator of Cloud Code, this is actually the best way to be using these present day models, right? You just give them the outcome and let it, let it do its work. And I believe it. That's how I've been using. I'm like, oh, this is very, very capable. Right? Uh, yes, a certain level of tech tenacity is still required in order to get AI to do what you want for sure. But what I want to convey with this episode is that a certain level of creative ambition is also needed. And I think that we're all setting that ceiling way too low, right. I think we can dream bigger. I think that we can ask it to do bigger tasks and I think that it can do those tasks and, and doesn't have to be a million dollars. It continues. We continue to be at a place where it AI is the cheapest it will, it will ever be.
[00:07:25] I'm still on the $20 a month plan and I use it a ton. Like I don't even. You don't even need to upgrade to the hundred dollar a month plan. Like maybe if you start now they'll throttle you. I don't know. But. And I'm being grandfathered in some, some sort of. Wow, sorry that whistle. I'm being grandfathered in in some sort of way. But like there's just so much that we can get it to do. And I'm not just saying like create for the sake of creating stuff because it can do that. I could like make a lot of that. You're less like, I don't need this long ass output. But you know, as we enter and as we're very much in this agentic era, like it can do things for you, it can create files for you, it can put things into Google Drive, you know, organized for you. Like that is not a small thing like the ceiling, it should be way higher than, than we have it.
[00:08:10] Right.
[00:08:11] I uh, think that we can dream bigger. I think we can ask it to do bigger tasks and I think that it can do those bigger tasks. Right. And you know, but as per, always don't just take my word for It. Go and try it. That is literally the point of this episode and the point of everything that I do in all these episodes is to go try it and in this case, go be more ambitious. So I knew this was gonna be a shorter episode. But there is one more thing I want to say, um, and when I, before I wrap this up, and that is that I feel no kind of way about the AI naysayers. Right? If someone doesn't want to use AI, then don't. Right? I'm. They're never gonna get any pressure or have any pressure from me. Like, I know that I will sing its praises, but it' looking to convince someone to use it. And even if you listening to this are just like, I still am on the fence about it, that's totally fine. I don't make these episodes to convince you to use it. I make these episodes to scratch my own curiosity itch and. And put the information out there and, uh, you know, as per, always take what serves you and by all means, leave the rest.
[00:09:12] So the reason I bring this up is because prompting curiosity as a brand is all. Is about all facets of. Of AI, Right? Not just the tech side. Uh, I'm here to talk about and discuss the human side, the philosophical side, the ethical side, all the things, right? So, no, I do not want data centers popping up all over. And objectively, we don't need them. They're. We do not need all of it. We do not like the science is shown to. The math is shown it. We don't need it.
[00:09:34] Yes, I want renewable energy sources to be powering everything. We have shown that that works. Yes. And also, yes, I really enjoy AI and I think there are so many incredible use cases, many of which I haven't even tried yet because I haven't been ambitious enough. So, you know, if forced to live within the binary and choose AI or nature, of course, I am choosing nature every time, right?
[00:09:57] If someone said that I could go back and we could go back and have a hard reset and, you know, with the Internet as a whole, I press that button a second like we are. We have lost our way many ways, right? But my point with all this is, you know, I am more than willing to give up the creature comforts afforded by tech if it was a binary situation, right? And my options were nature or AI technology or the ability for humans to think critically or have AI technology, right. I'll give up AI technology absolutely. But the binary isn't reality, Right. I think that we can have both, though it is worth Noting that extractive capitalism will be the death of us.
[00:10:38] Absolutely right.
[00:10:40] But at the end of the day, I don't have any desire to entertain any sentiments from the AI hecklers. Right? From the people that are just like pure AI. I hate it.
[00:10:51] Pure AI haters, you know, okay, you're. That's. That's. They're right and I'm not here to debate them. And again, not that, not that I have any of those people, like, knocking down my door. Um, but it just felt important for me to say this because, you know, with my other brand, my main brand, the Movement Maestro, I am a thought leader in the space. I know. Know where I stand, right? And I know that folks look to me for my opinion on things. And it's been interesting navigating AI and looking to respect as many viewpoints as possible regarding AI and I haven't really brought AI a ton into the Movement Maestro brand because I have this whole outlet here. Um, and I just like, haven't talked about it as much on there. But I don't want to say that's the plan. But like, I have no, you know, I don't want to say, like, that is my plan and I'm going to do that right now. Um, but definitely I have thought about this and navigating it and how I want to introduce things. And it has been interesting navigating AI in general and you know, my decision to cut the paid ties, aka to stop paying OpenAI, um, and to fully rebrand the podcast from ChatGPT, curious to prompting curiosity that was largely influenced by just this, the social pressures of things. And like, I think it was the right decision. Absolutely not. Like, oh, I got pressured into doing it, but like, I do take in what people say and what people feel as part of, you know, my, my viewpoints and my view, my uh, my view around AI and uh, hopefully my decision that, you know, just to rebrand, it speaks to the. The respect that I hold for nuance and for personal values and upholding personal values. Um, and again, I really do very much believe that it was the right decision. Um, and. And while no one is bullying me by any means, I do feel like, you know, this episode was an appropriate one for me to share my thoughts around the folks who, who have a hard line in the sand, you know, and they are very anti AI, um, or, you know, perhaps more accurately, this is a good episode for me to share my feelings around their beliefs. Um, which is that as for always to each their own right, new nuance exists, duality Exists. I don't think that for people that are so anti AI, they have as much nuance as, you know, I don't think they have very much nuance within their arguments. But, um, also to each their own right? I am very, very pro AI and I will also continue to do my part to offset the fact that the literal worst people ever are in charge of it.
[00:13:20] All right, all right. So before I wrap it up, the usual ending here, which is how I used AI this week. If you're new here, welcome. Each episode I share a quick example of how I used AI that week. This week I used Gemini's image generator, Nano, uh, Banana, um, very much M in a way that is very much in line with this episode's theme. And I use it to mock up my dream property.
[00:13:43] So Claude doesn't have like image generation like that, which is good, probably a good thing. But Gemini actually does. It's really good. So, um, because I have Google, uh, workspace, I get the Gemini account, like a pro account with it and I use, I mean you can do on the free account as well. But I, I went ahead and, uh, had some fun, right? It was actually really fun to visualize a space with a separate gym and a separate garage for a project car and hot tub and a sauna. Like where Lex and I live. Our place. We are incredibly, incredibly fortunate with the space that we have. It is very big, so 2400 square foot. What is, what do we want to call? It's a duplex. So we have the back unit we rent. But, um, It's. It's massive. 2500 square feet for two people is massive. Um, we both work from home, so, you know, we have two offices here and it was really important for us to have a guest room so people could stay. And, um, then we have bedrooms. So it's four bedrooms. We have a gym in the basement. Esque basement, esque kind of space.
[00:14:40] Um, we have like a little yard in the back where there's more gym equipment. Like, it is phenomenal. We have two car garages. This is the two car garage. But then you can't put nothing else in it. So I park my car in there because there's no top on the Jeep. Lex parks in the parking spot. Um, and then there's like we have a bunch of storage in the garage. But, you know, it was a really fun thing to think about downsizing the house and upsizing the backyard in some sort of ADU situation.
[00:15:05] Um, it's just fun, right? It's just fun. To be able to, like, actually visualize it. And that's what I did. That's what I used Gemini for. Right? You don't have to use AI just for work, obviously. That's a lot of what I discuss here on Propping Curiosity, but you could absolutely just use it for fun as well. And, um, that's exactly what I did. All right, that, my friends, is all for today. Hopefully you found this episode helpful if you did consider sharing it with someone you know who is curious about AI. Let's help this podcast grow. Please help me grow this podcast. Don't forget I have a companion newsletter and blog, the Curious Companion, that drops every Thursday. That is basically my. Basically, I mean exactly the podcast episode in text format. So if you, if you prefer to add a little stumbly there. If you prefer to read or you just want a written record of the things, join the newsletter fam. Or check out the blog. You can head to prompting curiosity.com forward/newsletter or forward slap not flow word, forward slash blog. Or you can keep it simple and just check out the links in the show notes as always, endlessly, endlessly, endlessly appreciative for every single one of you. Until we chat again next Thursday, stay curious.
