Latest / The Daily Writer / Todd Brison on AI, ChatGPT, and Our Unique Contribution as Human Writers

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Todd Brison on AI, ChatGPT, and Our Unique Contribution as Human Writers · The Daily Writer

0:06
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider Podcast, where we bring you tips and inspiration each day to help you build habits for writing success.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: For more resources, including your free Daily Rider Starter Kit, visit DailyRiderLife.com.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: Let's be honest, you don't have to look far to discover the supposed controversy around all things AI.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: Whether it's ChatGPT or a hundred other tools and apps that are based in AI, writers today have to come to grips with if and how we're going to use these tools ethically as any part of our business.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately we have to ask ourselves what unique contribution we make as human beings to the world when algorithms and AI and tools like ChatGPT, when those things seem to be taking over the world at a fast pace.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm really excited today to bring you this conversation with a writer who's thought about these issues a lot and can give us a helpful perspective.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: Todd Bryson is an optimist who writes.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: He's an Amazon best-selling author and award-winning ghostwriter, featured in Inc.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: magazine, Time, and CNBC.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: Back in his corporate days, he worked on a global marketing team in Paris, France.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: So most of his ideas work across many cultures.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: When he's not pounding the keyboard, you'll find him walking his spoiled French bulldog, drinking dandelion coffee in the kitchen with his wife Kate, or taking a bath with a book.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: Now in this conversation, Todd and I work through several questions around AI, such as should writers be afraid of AI and Chat GPT?
1:43
SPEAKER_00: What can writers add that those tools can't provide?
1:47
SPEAKER_00: What are some of the best ways that writers can use these tools ethically?
1:51
SPEAKER_00: And where do we see AI heading in the next year or perhaps the next few years?
1:56
SPEAKER_00: This was a really intriguing conversation, and it's one that I actually wanted to have for a long time.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: And I'm so glad that my good friend Jared Odal connected me with Todd.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: Because I actually asked Jared, hey, do you know anybody who might be a a good source on this?
2:11
SPEAKER_00: On Chat GPT AI and and somebody who's really familiar with this area and could help us have a good conversation here on the podcast.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: And I'm so thankful that Jared connected me with Todd.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: And I hope that this conversation gives you some guidance and clarity about your own approach to AI.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Now, before we get to the conversation, I do want to give a big thanks to today's sponsor, The Word Wizard.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: As we talk about tools for writing, one of the very best tools or resources that you can have is a great human editor.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's all kinds of great editing tools out there like Grammarly and Pro WritingAid, and who among us hasn't used Microsoft Word Spellcheck.
2:48
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2:52
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3:00
SPEAKER_00: You know, a great editor doesn't just correct grammar and spelling, they also pay attention to wordiness, shifts in tone and voice, overuse of particular words, and they also enhance transitions, clarity, and accuracy.
3:13
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3:19
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3:24
SPEAKER_00: All right, here's my conversation with Todd Bryson.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: Todd, welcome to the Daily Rider Podcast.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad that uh my friend Jared Odell connected us.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh, so glad to have you here and talk about all things chat GPT, some AI stuff, and the future.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: So welcome.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks, Kent.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, Jared's Jared's the best, as you know.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: He and I have been talking for on and off, I think the last couple of years as he's followed each other around on the internet.
3:51
SPEAKER_01: It's one of those internet friendships where it like you um, you know, you share interests and you immediately feel like pretty close to best friends, but you only talk every six six months.
4:00
SPEAKER_01: So it works, and uh that's that's the way we're living in now.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, I have to be nice to Jared because we actually went to college together back in the early 90s.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: No way.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, so we've known each other for literally decades.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: So I'm contractually obligated to be nice to him, of course, because he knows all my secrets, you know.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: Can't can't make the college dorm room uh roommates angry at you.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: That's no that that's that's for sure.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, although that was back in the days, that was way before the days of you know iPhones and cell phones and stuff.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: So proof doesn't exist of of all the the weird things.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: So let's dive in here.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we're gonna chat about well, chat about chat GPT and AI and some things.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: The the thing that seems to be the most prevalent emotion whenever writers are talking about all things related to AI or chat or whatever, is there's a this sense of foreboding and fear and pessimism about it.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: As you look at the landscape of the technology that's very rapidly developing, should we be afraid or should we be joyful and optimistic?
5:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, what do you think we should make of all this?
5:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:11
SPEAKER_01: Honestly, I think a little both, to tell you the truth.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: Um, right now we're watching probably the most visible manifestation of like the concern with this technology and writers is the Hollywood writers' strike right now.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: So at the time of recording, all of the Hollywood writers have just walked out and gone on strike.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: All of the tonight shows are dark, SNL's gonna go dark.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: And one of the big components in there is we need assurance that you're not gonna replace us with AI.
5:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, and that is, like I said, just a visual event of what all of us I think are going through on some level or another, right?
5:54
SPEAKER_01: We're going, holy cow, is this technology going to take over my job?
6:01
SPEAKER_01: Is it going to replace me as a human?
6:05
SPEAKER_01: These are the questions that we're concerned about.
6:08
SPEAKER_01: And I think I don't know, you say, should we be should we be joyful?
6:12
SPEAKER_01: Should we be afraid?
6:13
SPEAKER_01: I think we should be a little bit of both.
6:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, one of the one of the things that I said in the middle of the pandemic of 2020, I said two things, two things can be true at one time.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: There can be danger, and the danger can be exaggerated, right?
6:31
SPEAKER_01: So most of us are living in this world where we aren't really sure what's happening.
6:37
SPEAKER_01: And so we, you know, we look to the media, we look to everyone who's talking about it, and that's that's when we get nervous because media is looking for a story, we're looking for answers, and a lot of kind of get caught in a fearful place before we even know what happens.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: So if there is a possibility that people think AI can replace writers, to me, that naturally leads to the question what is it that actual human writers can contribute to books, articles, TV shows, newsletters, movies, whatever else?
7:10
SPEAKER_00: What is it that we contribute as actual humans that AI cannot contribute, at least not at this point?
7:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna quote one of the signs actually from the writer's strike uh a couple weeks ago.
7:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh protester was marching around holding up a sign that said, uh, ChatGPT doesn't have childhood trauma.
7:31
SPEAKER_01: Which is that's great.
7:33
SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit, yeah, it's a little bit roundabout way of saying, right, that AI still isn't human.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, one of the difficulties I think generally with using Chat GPT to generate writing, especially, and I think there are a couple of different conversations going on here.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: There is a big group of people who have um cornered themselves as experts in this last decade, right?
8:01
SPEAKER_01: So the internet goes social around 2007, 2008, like the bedrock was there before.
8:07
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you found a couple bloggers, or like if you were a real nerd, you had your RSS feed set up to your inbox directly and you were meeting these strangers.
8:16
SPEAKER_01: But in the late, you know, aughts, 20 aughts, we we forget how fast this has come about because even then there just weren't that many people saying stuff on the internet, and so you know, around 2007, eight, nine, 10, people corner themselves as experts, and you have um all these different interest groups start to break out, right?
8:39
SPEAKER_01: Like even Jim Kramer was involved in you know the personal brand movement of the late 20s, zero, zero's.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: And now what I think is interesting is that those people who rely on their expertise as the main draw for the audience, those people should be very afraid.
8:58
SPEAKER_01: Why?
8:58
SPEAKER_01: Because now, you know, even more so than Google.
9:02
SPEAKER_01: When we had Google, the experts fed into Google, right?
9:06
SPEAKER_01: So, like Google sourced the information that was coming from the experts.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: And now there's enough information out there available to Chat GPT that it just says, hey, you know what?
9:16
SPEAKER_01: I'm just gonna scan everything.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: I don't need one person to tell me the truth.
9:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna look at all these different sources, and then I'm gonna tell you what I think the answer is.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: And so if you've got a 17-year-old who is primarily using chat instead of Google, probably younger than that, right?
9:33
SPEAKER_01: Like maybe 14, 15, they're not necessarily attached to an expert because they they know something.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: Like they're they're not following me, Todd, or you can't because we're like the writing expert.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: I say all of that to say you asked, you know, what writers have now that artificial intelligence doesn't, or what chat GPT doesn't.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: I make a joke about childhood trauma because, in truth, that's what we have right now.
10:02
SPEAKER_01: We have our stories, we have our sorrow and tragedy and petty dramas and emotions and dysfunctional families or little achievements, even right.
10:18
SPEAKER_01: If you want to look on the white side of things, that artificial intelligence doesn't have.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: I think that we're rapidly approaching, I'll put kind of a cap on the answer in this way.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: I think we're rapidly approaching a time where artificial intelligence is going to write and create the visuals for and star in and produce and distribute a movie.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: I think that that's going to happen within the next five years.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: It'll be no humans touch it, it just goes boop, AI, write me a movie, and it'll like be able to generate all the scenes, generate all the scripts, and have it run from beginning to end.
10:53
SPEAKER_01: And everybody will be super impressed at first, and then nobody will care because there's no part behind it.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: There, there's no actual story behind it.
11:05
SPEAKER_01: It's just like a thing that somebody made up, and we'll be all too aware of that to be able to invest in the story itself, I think.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: This reminds me a lot of something I came across on YouTube.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: And I've seen these before, of course, but I randomly came across it two or three days ago.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: It was this, and I wish I could remember who the artist was.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: I'd feel bad I can't.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: There was this guy who makes flipbooks, these big, long, elaborate flipbooks that have like, you know, hundreds of panels, and you know, spends hundreds and hundreds of hours drawing these.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's obviously extremely homemade.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing computerized about it.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: He's and it shows them sitting at a desk making these flipbooks.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: And it's fascinating because it's so human.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: And so I wonder if if we can't make the case of okay, our AI or computers or chat GPT is going to be able to do all these things, but there's always going to be space in the arts and in communication and in writing for things that are just human creation.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: So why should we really be afraid in a sense?
12:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: Well, you said you said the key word right there, which I think is uh the arts.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: Like the last, I don't know, 15 years or so, writing has moved aggressively into the business corner, where it's almost like, oh, if you're not writing to make money, like what are you doing?
12:27
SPEAKER_01: Like, why would you even bother?
12:29
SPEAKER_01: And of course, we have centuries of human history that show like why you would bother creating stuff even if you're not getting paid for it, that we just, you know, don't don't talk about as much.
12:41
SPEAKER_01: Those benefits have been relegated to the to the corners of the internet, whereas it was once mainstream and making money with the art was like you had to sell out culture, right?
12:52
SPEAKER_01: Like it's like, oh man, you you can't follow that guy.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: He's sold out, he's he's with the big record labels, and now that that culture is mostly gone and it's going, oh yeah, we we write to make money.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: It's fine as as a pursuit.
13:05
SPEAKER_01: I do that.
13:05
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people do that, but it's far from the only reason to write or create.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and if you look at some of the greatest works of human civilization, most of those were not really created for money.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: They were just created right out of passion and interest and culture and so forth.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: Right.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: And and I think I the difference there is risk, right?
13:29
SPEAKER_01: Like when you're trying to make money, I know this is a little off topic, but when you're trying to build a business or build something that makes money, you have to you have to minimize risk, right?
13:40
SPEAKER_01: In a way to protect the bottom line.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: And we see this over and over, even in companies like Google.
13:48
SPEAKER_01: Google should have been first to the AI race.
13:50
SPEAKER_01: They should have been.
13:51
SPEAKER_01: They they were in the right place, they had access to all the right talent, they had more money than anyone could have ever dreamed of, but they didn't.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: Why?
13:59
SPEAKER_01: They got beat by this guy, Sam Altman, who you know built the program, got bought out by Microsoft.
14:05
SPEAKER_01: And against all odds, now you're seeing like Bing have AI integrated before Google, which would have been mind-blowing even two years, even two years ago.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: But what happened was you know, Google got big and comfortable and they couldn't take risks that threatened their bottom line.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: And here we are.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: And I think, like you mentioned, that's how a lot of great art gets created.
14:30
SPEAKER_01: Um, I mentioned movies, we see this all the time.
14:33
SPEAKER_01: You know, you have all these sequels that are pretty predictable and bland and safe and generate a big hefty profit just because they're not dangerous, they're not risky, and they use existing IP and they use the same recycled um plot lines and characters and tropes, and all of that is fine, but typically not what stands out, right?
14:59
SPEAKER_01: It's not the stuff that that rises above and um in in the arts history for sure.
15:05
SPEAKER_01: It has to be something unusual and something that's a little risky at the time, um, that ends up looking you know like common sense decades later.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: And you mentioned, I don't remember if this is before we hit record or not.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: You mentioned ghostwriting when it comes to doing things like ghostwriting or even things like um development editing or things that are very human, they're a very human part of the the process.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: Do you think um so those of us who are ghostwriters, are we safer with this?
15:38
SPEAKER_00: Because I I can't imagine a scenario where somebody needs a ghostwriter and AI is gonna be able to do that, or maybe it will.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you're doing client work, does that kind of put you at a big advantage?
15:49
SPEAKER_00: Because just by definition of how the process works, you've got to have a human sort of synthesizing the story and crafting and doing interviews and all these kinds of things.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think I think that AI gets better.
16:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, I do think it's probably able to ghost write something at some point.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: That's very vague.
16:14
SPEAKER_01: But I yeah, I I think that probably AI will can put a book together.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: The difficulty comes with like we've been talking about that that human element.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, I think if you at least of right now, at time of recording, if you want a book that sounds human and sounds uniquely you, there has to be at least one human available in the process, right?
16:40
SPEAKER_01: You can't you can't just say, hey, write this kind of book and let it go.
16:45
SPEAKER_01: Because one, it might not be accurate, and we can kind of talk about that later.
16:50
SPEAKER_01: But two, it hits on these things that we talked about earlier, which is why read the book?
16:56
SPEAKER_01: Why watch the movie?
16:57
SPEAKER_01: Why look at the painting?
16:59
SPEAKER_01: Why listen to the music?
17:02
SPEAKER_01: A human story.
17:03
SPEAKER_01: That's that's why.
17:05
SPEAKER_01: And so while AI may be capable of it, and it probably will, I don't want to sit here and pretend that like AI won't take jobs.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: I think it will most definitely take jobs.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: I just think it's not there yet, and I think that there will be other jobs in its place.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: Um, and and ghostwriting is one of those things that is not there yet, but will probably at least require for the next three to five years someone on the, if nothing else, just like reading the output and editing what comes out to to make make it sensical.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: It is kind of funny.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: I think the you know, people are like lauding Chat GPT and AI stuff now, and and for good reason, you know, it's pretty amazing technology, but sometimes the lack of accuracy still is really stunning.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: Like I asked it to give me a um I put in a prompt a few weeks ago to chat to Chat GPT.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: I just said, tell me the five best episodes of the Daily Writer podcast with Kent Sanders.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: I was just curious who it would spit out.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: And it gave me five episodes that actually don't exist.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: I was like, wait a minute, this is like the dumbest thing ever.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: It can't even look, you know, and give me accurate titles.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: But the funny thing was that the titles that it did give me, every single one of them were titles, and I was like, man, each of those would make a great episode.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: So wait a minute, it's it's so inaccurate, but the prompts were actually what it gave me was was seriously good.
18:35
SPEAKER_02: So who knows?
18:36
SPEAKER_02: And I think I don't know.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%.
18:39
SPEAKER_01: My little story that that sounds similar to that is I was doing research on um Terry Pratchett, who's a satire fantasy author.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: His books, you could see it.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if we'll have the video up, but it's all my top shelf.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: That's all Terry Pratchett up there.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: Nice.
18:53
SPEAKER_01: I was writing a post about him and wanting to just find out about his life through Chat GPT without having to.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: This is gonna sound really um spoiled, but you know, without having to click on 10 different articles, right?
19:07
SPEAKER_01: Like that's that's the beauty of chat, is like you don't have to look at 17 different places.
19:12
SPEAKER_01: You can go tell me about this guy, summarize his career in uh, you know, his his bookography or his biography, everything in your road.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: Now tell me the financial highlights.
19:22
SPEAKER_01: Now tell me some authors that he inspired.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: Now tell me something about his personal life, all in the same interface.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: That's theoretically what it's good for.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: And I'm using this one day, it was a it was a Tuesday I was preparing.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh my gosh, this is this is so great.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: I can summarize Wikipedia pages essentially in the way that I want them to, and pull the information that I want.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: And because I'm a curious person and because I like to read still, I said, Hey chat, you know, this is all great.
19:52
SPEAKER_01: Can you give me the sources for this information?
19:55
SPEAKER_01: Like, where are you pulling this?
19:56
SPEAKER_01: Just give me a couple links.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: And he said, sure, no problem.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: Gave me five links and I clicked the first one, it says 404 error link not found.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: I said, Oh, that's interesting.
20:06
SPEAKER_01: And I clicked the second one, it said 404 link not found.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: I clicked the third one, 404.
20:11
SPEAKER_01: And this went on until I had chat give me, I don't know, probably 25 different sources that it was supposed to be pulling from, and they were all broken.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: And because I'm a little more naive than most, it took me a while to figure out.
20:25
SPEAKER_01: Um, it was just making up URLs, like it was just pulling them out of the air.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: They looked right because it can figure out what's supposed to look right, just like with your podcast, right?
20:36
SPEAKER_01: Like it knows what they're supposed to sort of sound like or look like, right?
20:40
SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't exist.
20:42
SPEAKER_01: And my big problem now is if you can't trust it every time, can you even trust it one exactly one time?
20:52
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
20:52
SPEAKER_01: That's where I'm at.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the inaccuracies were were kind of stunning.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: It was even um even in my bio, I used to give me a bio of myself.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: It was attributing books to me that I had not written.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking that's a pretty simple thing to check, you know.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't think that would be a complex computer thing.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: So who knows?
21:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, it was it was kind of like it sounded kind of right, but it wasn't really accurate.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't know what to make of that.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: I think that chat GPT will be wonderful or is wonderful right now at just general generating like corporate BS, you know, those papers that are supposed to say something but say nothing.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: That's what Chat GPT is really good at right now.
21:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, at least I keep saying right now because somebody's listening to the six months down the road could be a different story.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: Five years down the road will definitely be a different story.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: Oh, for sure.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: For sure.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: Hey, I want to pause here and give a big thanks to today's two sponsors, the first of which is Vellum.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: You've heard me talk about Vellum here on the podcast before.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: Vellum is my go to choice for book formatting software, and it's actually been that.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Way for a long, long time.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: I've used Vellum for gosh, how many years has it been?
22:04
SPEAKER_00: It's creeping up on 10 years, I think.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: I first started using Vellum, I think, in 2015.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: So we're creeping up on almost a whole decade of using Vellum, and I have enjoyed every single second of it.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I've spent a lot of time in Vellum over the past week or two working on a couple of new short book projects.
22:21
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22:27
SPEAKER_00: And the deal with Vellum is one of the cool deals with Vellum is that you can download it and you can use every feature on Vellum.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: You can play with your books formatting to your heart's content, and you only have to purchase the app when you're ready to publish.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: Now, Vellum is not a cheap app, but it is going to save you loads and loads of time over the long term.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: So by the time you pay one single person to do your book formatting, you could do it yourself in Vellum for the price of owning it literally forever.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: So if you are an indie publisher and you like to do your own book formatting, I really encourage you to try Vellum out by going to trivellum.com slash daily.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: That's trivellum.com slash daily.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: I also want to give a huge shout out to one of our other sponsors today, Thumbprint Creative, which is owned by my good friend and creative collaborator, Christy Griffith.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: Christy is a graphic designer and layout artist.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: I have worked with Christy on a lot of different projects, including my own stuff as well as client books.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: She is fast, she is very reasonably priced, she is creative and so, so easy to work with.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: Now I just mentioned Vellum, which is a tool for formatting your own books.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: But if you don't want to mess with that stuff and you just want to get on with building your business and focus on the writing, Christy is a wonderful solution for not just cover design, but also your interior formatting and your book proofreading if you'd like to have her do that.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: You can check out her sample designs and some of the other projects that she's done over the years by going to go thumbprint.com.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: That's go thumbprint.com.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: She is so wonderful to work with.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: And if you would like a personal introduction to Christy, shoot me an email at Kent at DailyRiderLife.com.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: I would be thrilled to make an introduction for you.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: And I think you'd really, really enjoy working with Christy.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: All right, thanks again to our sponsors today.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: And let's get back to the conversation with Todd Bryson.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious if we're even given the inadequacies or the the errors that that AI is giving to us.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: Um if you're a working writer today, maybe you're doing blog posts, newsletters, nonfiction, fiction, whatever it is, do you have some suggestions for writers on the best ways that we can use chat GPT ethically?
24:42
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's even up, maybe the definition of that is even up in the air.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to be ethical with this?
24:47
SPEAKER_00: That's even kind of a cloudy area in itself.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
24:51
SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm going to again kind of recall around 2020 where you know the pandemic kicks up, and we're all, man, it seems so bizarre now, but three years ago, we were all just trying to figure out what was going on.
25:06
SPEAKER_01: Like we had no idea.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: Well, I remember specifically we're in the house, like all the buildings have cleared out.
25:14
SPEAKER_01: Kate and I are in the okay, my wife Kate and I are in the house and we're ordering groceries.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: And at that time, we're like spray cleaning the oranges, right?
25:22
SPEAKER_01: Like we're wiping off the because we have no idea.
25:24
SPEAKER_01: We're just like, I I don't know if I can trust anything.
25:27
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I can eat anything.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: And during that, yeah, exactly exactly.
25:32
SPEAKER_01: We're we're just all afraid, right?
25:33
SPEAKER_01: And trying to figure out information that can help us through.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: During this time, I'm writing on medium.com, which is kind of the place that I got my start.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: I think somewhere around 70,000 followers uh still today.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: But I I knew most of the people who were writing and getting, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions of views every month during that time.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: One of the things that happened during that time is everyone shifted from whatever they were writing about to writing about the pandemic.
26:12
SPEAKER_01: And so now we have these people who have a history of writing not medical stuff, not health stuff, not wellness stuff, just you know, maybe personal growth, maybe finances, are now scrambling to write something about this virus because they know what I think we all know implicitly attention is rewarded more highly than the truth right now.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you'd have these, you know, bloggers like me, and I that's not a derogatory term, that's just what we are like self-taught writers who got our attention by writing, um published things that just weren't true.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: And whenever the national news outlets got involved and would ask us, you know, why why did you print this?
27:06
SPEAKER_01: Where did you get the information from?
27:07
SPEAKER_01: It just couldn't, you know, it couldn't hold weight because we were just trying to get to get something.
27:13
SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, the that that whole story is more complicated.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: There was money involved at the time, right?
27:20
SPEAKER_01: So we were getting paid directly from medium.
27:22
SPEAKER_01: We didn't want to see the checks go away.
27:24
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so you know, some of some of my friends got in got in trouble.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: One of them is on the record for the case, uh, for for the record.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: He he went on the record and said, uh, you should definitely not trust me.
27:35
SPEAKER_01: He wrote an article that went viral.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: He's like, here's how we can conquer coronavirus.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: Goes viral.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: New York Times and everybody, The Verge, come in to interview him, and he goes, uh, no, no, no, no, no.
27:44
SPEAKER_01: Like, don't talk to me about this, please, because I don't really know what I'm talking about.
27:47
SPEAKER_01: And I think that that is where we are now again.
27:51
SPEAKER_01: Like, you have a bunch of creators who are incentivized to get attention, and we talked about this earlier, in a pursuit of making money, right?
28:01
SPEAKER_01: Because that's what those two are tied very close together now.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: And my biggest fear, honestly, is not that you know, journalists will misuse Chat GPT or that politicians will misuse it.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: My biggest fear is that the creators at kind of like my level and your level, who are just producing stuff, we have our calendars, we want to be seen, we want to be heard, and we don't stop to check, hey, is this true?
28:27
SPEAKER_01: We don't say, Am I getting misinformed from this tool?
28:34
SPEAKER_01: So when it comes to you know the ethics of AI and Chat GPT, I think every person who presses publish on anything, written, audio, visual, whatever, has an obligation to say, have I checked this elsewhere?
28:52
SPEAKER_01: Have I have I verified this information?
28:54
SPEAKER_01: Do I know where the source comes from?
28:56
SPEAKER_01: Is it accurate and valid to the best of my understanding at a bare minimum before releasing it into the world?
29:04
SPEAKER_01: Because as we all know, like once it's gone, you can't get it back.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: Like what once you say it, you could print retractions, but once it's spread, man, it's it's gone.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: The damage is done.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really true.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: That's really, really true.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: And it's so hard to put stuff, I mean, it's so easy to put stuff out there that is not really researched or it's just kind of what you think.
29:23
SPEAKER_00: And and that's that's one type of writing, which is totally fine.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: It's just here's what you think about the world.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: But if you're trying to be an authority around something that that does depend on facts on some level, then you kind of have a responsibility to do that.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think so.
29:38
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not talking about obviously there are two sides of the debate politically and with the with the virus, there are a couple different sides of the debate.
29:47
SPEAKER_01: These are opinions, right?
29:48
SPEAKER_01: But if you're bringing your where's the opinion come from?
29:53
SPEAKER_01: That's my next question.
29:54
SPEAKER_01: Where's the opinion come from?
29:55
SPEAKER_01: And then where is that source coming from?
29:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I think that's the responsibility of everyone who's who hits publish.
30:03
SPEAKER_01: I I don't care if you're a dad um in Fairchild, Illinois, like with an audience of 12 people, or if you're a mom blogger with 500,000 followers, the obligation is verify the truth to the best that you can before you share anything.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: There is kind of an interesting dynamic here.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: I I don't even know if if I would call this like um a cultural thing or a psychological thing or whatever, but this thing of people do they like to follow authorities.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: They like to follow people that have big personalities and that kind of show up with a certain amount of confidence or charisma.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: And that's been true of all of human history.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: And so we have to be kind of careful about you know, following or trusting people who who seem to have that level of confidence or charisma, but maybe they're not being totally truthful or whatever the case might be.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: And it's also a great lesson for ourselves that if you can be the world's greatest writer and the the world's most ethical writer, but if you don't show up with a certain amount of confidence or charisma or style, then people are just gonna ignore you because you can be like the the nerdy kid in the corner who's a great writer or something.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: But if you don't show up in the world with some confidence, it's gonna be a real struggle to build an audience.
31:31
SPEAKER_01: We're drawn to certainty, right?
31:34
SPEAKER_01: We we as readers, we we want to find someone who knows what's going on.
31:41
SPEAKER_01: That's that's what we want to to kind of quash all our fears, whether it's a global pandemic or whether it's a technology trend that's supposed to replace us all or whatever.
31:52
SPEAKER_01: We we want someone to come out and say, hey, here's the truth, and this is BS.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: And I think in some ways, that's why the voices online have gotten so polarizing.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: Um and so I think you know, if you're a writer looking to build an audience online, you got to build a flair for the dramatic, or you you have to couple, you have to partner with somebody that does.
32:19
SPEAKER_01: You and I were talking before we before we got on about my partner, Tim Denning.
32:23
SPEAKER_01: I said, um, or you said something along the lines of like he's not afraid to get angry or sassy in his emails.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: And he's not, he's not afraid of the criticism that comes from it.
32:33
SPEAKER_01: The reason that he's um a good partner for me is because I am just by nature more more cautious and more uh timid, I guess, about that criticism and about saying things.
32:46
SPEAKER_01: I've had you know some success on the writing front, just as an individual on my own right.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: But there's certainly a line.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: And I think that there's a place for everybody in the modern in the modern era in the 2023 on to if you don't like the criticism, you know, partner up.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: That's why I mentioned talk shows earlier.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: That's why the talk shows have one host and 24 writers on staff, right?
33:15
SPEAKER_01: Because you got one guy that that's gonna take the heat and the other guys that kind of kind of punch him up.
33:20
SPEAKER_01: Both are required.
33:21
SPEAKER_01: And if you're the kind of person who can do both, amazing.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: If you're not, find a partner and and start moving that way.
33:27
SPEAKER_01: Totally.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: Where do you see AI heading in the next few years?
33:31
SPEAKER_00: So let's say it's the year 2028.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, any thoughts on where things like chat uh chat GPT, I've got to say it correctly.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: Any thoughts on where something like chat GPT may be headed?
33:44
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna let you off the hook for mispronouncing it because every time I type chat GPT in my iPhone, it corrects it to Chad GPT.
33:53
SPEAKER_01: And so I I always picture this guy with like a backwards uh baseball cap.
33:57
SPEAKER_01: He's got his oak oakley's on, he's just feeding me all this information for no good reason.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Chad GPT, that's there on his computer, he's answering everybody's prompts.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
34:06
SPEAKER_01: It's just one guy, it's just one guy.
34:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he has several five-hour energies that he gets through uh every every couple of seconds.
34:15
SPEAKER_01: Where is AI in in five years?
34:18
SPEAKER_01: You know, honestly, I I don't know.
34:23
SPEAKER_01: I have a couple of guesses.
34:26
SPEAKER_01: I really do think that Chat GPT writes the ship and sorts out its misinformation issues.
34:36
SPEAKER_01: I think I think that it's very likely that that happens much quicker than than five years from now.
34:43
SPEAKER_01: I also said it's very likely that AI takes over a lot of of human work.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: I I think that that is that it's likely.
34:52
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that it'll be I don't think that in 2028 we will have artificial intelligence writing for talk show hosts or comedians or even regularly for um Hollywood stories.
35:13
SPEAKER_01: I I again at the risk of somebody pulling this clip up five years from now and be like, look, this goober who doubted the tech.
35:20
SPEAKER_01: I I have a hard time seeing that.
35:24
SPEAKER_01: Um but like I said, I I think that SEO writing, I think that a lot of that will be uh will be taken over.
35:33
SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of technical writing uh will be taken over just because there are fewer emotions involved in those and more just kind of matter-of-fact writing.
35:47
SPEAKER_01: And so I I think that those things probably, or if you're a technical writer right now, or if you are a SEO writer right now, I don't think the solution is to panic.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: I think the solution is to try and integrate the tool into your own workflow.
36:04
SPEAKER_01: For me, the biggest antidote to fear about all of this, and I have had plenty, trust me, is just to try and use it.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: Try and use it, try get all the tools and use them to the best of the ability.
36:17
SPEAKER_01: And then you'll have a clear eye on, you know, at least where is this now?
36:22
SPEAKER_01: And can I use it now?
36:24
SPEAKER_01: How much of this fear is real and how much of it is is, I don't know, imaginary in my head.
36:31
SPEAKER_01: I'll I'll leave this question with a with a someone to follow on this topic.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's a Stanford professor in the Stanford Digital Labs.
36:40
SPEAKER_01: His name is Eric Brynyofsen.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: He's a great follow on Twitter.
36:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, just guess at the name spelling, and honestly, you'll probably get there.
36:49
SPEAKER_01: But he's he's up to date on this, and he's probably my my most trusted um name for for watching this stuff and and understanding where it's headed.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: Very cool.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: Love it.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, one final question here, Tana.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: Actually, I've got two final questions because I'm gonna ask you where people can find you.
37:07
SPEAKER_00: Um so I know you have well, I would actually that ties into what I was gonna ask about Substack.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: So I know you have a Substack newsletter.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, should people be doing Substack instead of doing a newsletter like from something like Convert Kit or something else?
37:23
SPEAKER_00: Like, what are the advantages of using Substack versus other kinds of ways of connecting with readers?
37:31
SPEAKER_01: I like Substack because uh the follow button that's on so many other social media platforms has been replaced by the subscribe button on Substack.
37:44
SPEAKER_01: So as of you know, right now, I think it's just been a few weeks ago that they launched their notes feature, which is essentially a Twitter clone.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: Like if you're on Substack and you've seen this come up, it is a Twitter clone.
37:58
SPEAKER_01: There's no mistaking that.
37:59
SPEAKER_01: But instead of following people, you can subscribe to their newsletters.
38:03
SPEAKER_01: This for you know, if you're a reader, that's obviously great because you can be selective about who you choose that's coming into your inbox.
38:12
SPEAKER_01: But as a writer, it's it's potentially even better because the problem with followers has always been what if they get taken away from me?
38:23
SPEAKER_01: Like we saw this.
38:24
SPEAKER_01: I I think Facebook is probably the biggest menace with this.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: Um allowing people to build, you know, audiences of hundreds of thousands and then flipping the algorithm so that now those creators have to literally pay to reach the audience that they built on that platform.
38:44
SPEAKER_01: Um but that kind of behavior, you know, we see it everywhere, and we will see it everywhere unless there's some sort of alignment between the creators and the people who make the platform.
38:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's why I like Substack.
38:59
SPEAKER_01: As far as an actual like email distribution system, it's okay.
39:04
SPEAKER_01: There's there's no automation, um, which means no welcome sequences.
39:09
SPEAKER_01: There's no tagging, which means if you are running, you know, e-commerce or some sort of business on the back of it where you need to to segment people, you can't do that.
39:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, but certainly as a replacement for I'm going to talk about technology trends on Twitter.
39:30
SPEAKER_01: I don't know why you wouldn't go and talk about them on Substack because you can you can get the emails directly, which means you can pack up and leave whenever you want to.
39:39
SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, Substack's had a nice moment where it's um peak growth mode right now, and um it's hot.
39:47
SPEAKER_01: To kind of put that in in context, um, again to bring up, you know, Tim, he's seeing half his readers on Substack are coming from Substack's network itself.
39:59
SPEAKER_01: So interesting.
40:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a couple of years ago you had to bring your own audience.
40:04
SPEAKER_01: Now Substack is big enough that it's a legitimate um discovery platform for writers to to just go on and the audience is is there.
40:15
SPEAKER_01: Almost kind of like Medium, how there's an already existing audience there.
40:19
SPEAKER_01: Yes, they I think they're pretty much following the the exact model that medium follows.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: The only difference is they they won't pay um people directly for writing, but they'll you know incentivize paid newsletters and and take their little cut.
40:35
SPEAKER_01: Is that a business model that lasts forever?
40:38
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, but right now it's it's in a really good place for um you know Substack and its writers.
40:46
SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: Well, Todd, this has been awesome.
40:50
SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate your thoughts about AI, Chat GPT, or and his brother Chad.
40:56
SPEAKER_00: Chad, Chad GPT, Chad GPT, that's the guy.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: Um, and all this, this has been so informative.
41:03
SPEAKER_00: I've I haven't had a guest on the show yet who's really talked about this and who's been able to talk intelligently about it.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: So this is great.
41:10
SPEAKER_00: Where can people go to sign up for your newsletter and find out more about you?
41:14
SPEAKER_01: Uh, sure.
41:15
SPEAKER_01: Best place to find me is just to go to uh whatmakesgreatwriting.com.
41:21
SPEAKER_01: That's a website uh where I share my thoughts on, you know, not only where chat GPT is going and how it affects writers, but how writers can find other benefits from their writing.
41:35
SPEAKER_01: You know, we talked earlier about the the arts and the the creative juices and the benefits you get from writing there.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: Not to mention all of the uh all of the technical skills I write that are too boring for most um for most casual writers.
41:50
SPEAKER_01: If you're a nerd, you'll definitely enjoy the site.
41:53
SPEAKER_01: It's what makes greatwriting.com.
41:55
SPEAKER_01: You'll find me there.
41:56
SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
41:57
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
41:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you again.
41:58
SPEAKER_00: This has been an absolute blast, and I look forward to connecting sometime again soon.
42:02
SPEAKER_00: Right on, Kent.
42:03
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
42:05
SPEAKER_00: Hey, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Todd.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: I thought that was really, really thought-provoking, and I came away with a lot of things to think about related to chat GPT, AI, and other kinds of tools.
42:16
SPEAKER_00: And you know, this is not something as writers that we can just stick our heads in the sand about.
42:19
SPEAKER_00: This is reality and the world today, and we need to figure out how we're going to how we're going to interact and engage with technology as time goes on, because um, obviously, you know, AI has actually been embedded in a lot of our devices for quite a while.
42:35
SPEAKER_00: And it's only going to become more prevalent and more and more embedded in our culture.
42:40
SPEAKER_00: So we need to figure out how we're going to if and how we're going to use these tools in our business and to what extent.
42:46
SPEAKER_00: And most of all, how do we do it ethically and in a way that supports what we're doing as human contributors to the writing process and obviously not doing it in a way that that violates any sort of ethics or morals.
43:00
SPEAKER_00: Those are some things that we gotta think about.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: And again, I don't think the solution is to stick our heads in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist.
43:06
SPEAKER_00: We have to figure out uh what the role of these tools are in our lives, in our society, and in our business.
43:12
SPEAKER_00: So hope this has given you some things to think about.
43:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh this was not an episode where we came with a lot of answers because this is a constantly evolving topic.
43:21
SPEAKER_00: And plus I think it's always more powerful.
43:23
SPEAKER_00: So I come from a teaching background, and I think questions are much more powerful than just giving people the answers anyway.
43:29
SPEAKER_00: So I hope that this was a thought-provoking and insightful conversation for you.
43:33
SPEAKER_00: I do encourage you to check out Todd's website by going to toddbryson.com.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: There is a link in the show notes as well.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: And you can sign up for his weekly email newsletter, which is great.
43:42
SPEAKER_00: So make sure and connect with him and discover the cool things that he's working on as well.
43:46
SPEAKER_00: And I also hope that you will check out the sponsors that we've mentioned in today's episode.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: All right, my friend, as always, I so appreciate your time listening to this show.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: And I'll see you next time.