Thoughts on ChatGPT and AI Tools

What is ChatGPT

• ChatGPT is an AI application that can answer any question you ask it. OpenAI trained it on human generated content up until 2021. It is something called a Large Language Model (LLM) where it generates some text based on the question.
• One surprising thing about chatGPT is how good it is at providing answers to questions. Normally, you would need to search Google and read through multiple pages to find an answer. ChatGPT provides you a single answer, as if it were an expert.  So you don't have to navigate through multiple pages to find the information you need.
• I've tested ChatGPT  by chatting with it about facts, code, soft skills, and creating plans. It gave great to good answers for most. 
• It is not perfect.  If you know what you're asking about you will know its limitations. Even with these limitations, it is immediately useful for lots of things. For me it is most useful for organizing things I already know, remember things that I knew of but forgot and helping with coding syntax instead of having to look up documentation. 

Where is the immediate impact

• It is a great companion to our work. It can be a great tutor when you're learning something.

• It writes code and creates essays so well, it seems that it will affect any test based on textual input. Think school essays, online coding tests etc.

• ChatGPT together with other AI tools like DALL-E, MidJourney will change creative fields. 

• You can know generate poems, stories, create artwork all through AI. 

• You can create animations and videos with prompts and scripts. 

• You can create designs and copy for your product. 

• AI generated content will explode. It will difficult to know what is AI created vs human generated.

• It will democratize all these skills so people who are bad at these can already do an OK job using these AI tools. 

• Good creators, developers, designers, story tellers, editors, animators will always have demand. Because after all AI is doing for now is regurgitating what these masters have been doing.

 

Good creators, developers, designers, story tellers, editors, animators will always have demand. Because after all AI is doing for now is regurgitating what these masters have been doing.

 

What about the future

• AI has exceeded human capacity in some games like Chess and GO. It makes moves which a human thinker can't think of. 
• With more progress, AI will also be able to create great content. The downside is that AI will also create useless content. It will again need humans to review the output to choose the best ones. And may be combine them to create an even better one.

With more progress, AI will also be able to create great content. The downside is that AI will also create useless content. It will again need humans to review the output to choose the best ones. And may be combine them to create an even better one.

Final Point

In summary, with this AI revolution, we will add a few more tools in our toolset to create things faster and better. 

What I learnt from my effective PM colleagues

I always wanted to build products and scale the impact I was having. So when I got an opportunity to work as a product manager, I jumped at it. As I was new to the PM world, I read some books to understand what that role entails and how to do the work.

But there are somethings that can't be learnt from books. I got a chance to work alongside some great PMs whose effortless way to get things done blew me away. I decided to learn as much as I can from those colleagues. I'm super thankful to have had the chance to work with them and learn from them.

I wanted to list the things I learnt in no particular order.

• Be proactive in approaching people and building relationships. - Even when they were new, they took the time to understand who can help, setup a meeting with them and introduce themselves. 
• Keep people updated, give and take help - Since they had built the relationship if they had any question about something, they didn't hesitate to reach out and ask for help. In the same vein if there was something they could help with, they would take the time to help with anything that they could help with.  
• Do the hard work to form an opinion and then express the opinion to rapidly test it and solidify it. - They take the time to understand the problem they are trying to solve, think about it from various angles and form an opinion. Then they would express the opinions any chance they get so that they can clarify and improve it rapidly. 
• Stay organized - They take the time to keep everything organized so they don't need to hunt for things when they need share or work on something. 
• Externalize your knowledge in writing and visuals to bring everyone to the same page - They would find ways to write out their opinions. As you know writing is a way to clarify your thinking. Another bonus is if you can draw simple diagrams showing all the parts of the system, that would help improve your thinking and also help explain things to people and bring everyone to the same page. 
• Always look out for opportunities to evangelize the products we are building. Use it to motivate the team and brag about the impact. - They always kept the vision and impact of the products they are building in mind. So they would also bring it in to anywhere required to motivate and also subtly brag about their and their teams impact. 
• Gently prod people to set high expectations - When someone suggests an unmotivated solution or a leisurely timeline, they would gently remind them about their effectiveness and help them set a lofty goal. 
• Co-create things with your team - To effectively work with others, they would start a draft and then use that to facilitate the discussion, all the while updating it live as others give their opinions and suggestions. This will both make everyone feel valued and help capture all the notes without wasting time later. 
• Keep the sales and account management team close. It helps to know the pulse of your products and helps you sell it better. - They worked closely with the sales and account management team to identify the beta customers, understand which customers would like the product, what possible impediments might be there in adoption etc which helps to keep the product moving smoothly from inception to launch.