Newsletter Archive (Year 2)

June 6, 2025

Issue #102 - Career Trajectories
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - The impact of AI taking entry-level jobs on career and education.
  - OpenAI CEO: 95% of ad agencies work to be done by AI.
  - Silicon Valley sees putting people out of work as a massive opportunity.
  - Vista Equity Partners: 60% at this conference will be looking for work next year.
  - Zapier CEO: 100% of new hires must be fluent in AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - ChatGPT mobile usage approaches 20 minutes/day.
  - In just 2 years OpenAI matched the number of searches Google took 11 years to achieve.
  - In 2025, there are 25,000 AI startups.
  - AI adoption in the enterprise is up 7%.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - How we moved from image generation to full synthetic media production in just two years.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Bank of England is testing AI to predict inflation.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Britons among the world’s most worried people about the rise of AI.

Read

May 25, 2025

Issue #101 - AI Privileges
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Anthropic: almost guaranteed that AI will automate nearly every white-collar job by 2027–28.
  - Foxconn predicts AI will end manufacturers' search for cheap labor.
  - The jobs AI is creating.
- Prompting
  - A product manager shows how it's done.
  - AI tools and their prompts.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Approaching real-time lifelike voice synthesis.
- The Way We Work Now
  - UBS is turning its analysts into AI avatars.
  - How some schools are turning upside down their approach to AI for students.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Politico has broken its rules about AI in the newsroom.

Read

May 18, 2025

Issue #100 - State of the Union
- Editorial
  - 100 Issues of Synthetic Work - State of Union.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Norway Wealth Fund is to freeze hiring because of AI.
  - The UK government blocks amendment about copyright material in AI models.
  - YouTube introduces AI features to simplify content creation and editing.
- Prompting
  - Your prompts must look like this.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - OpenAI o3: it was good while it lasted.

Read

May 3, 2025

Issue #99 - Evolutionary Pressure
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - In fact, research firms are conducting AI experiments on Reddit.
  - North Korea stole your job.
  - AI passes clinical trial as therapist.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Wikipedia, Duolingo, and the BBC are doing with AI.
- Prompting
  - Subtle changes in our prompts influence LLMs behavior.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Barack Obama: "How do we get purpose and meaning in our lives?"
  - Eric Schmidt: "In one year, the vast majority of programmers will be replaced by AI programmers."

Read

April 27, 2025

Issue #98 - The New Normal
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - United Arab Emirates to use AI to write new legislation.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - OpenAI o3 is the model you want to use.
  - Moving to ExportGPT for Chrome.
- The Way We Work Now
  - AI now assists rescue dogs, too.
  - AI now writes bar exam questions, too (and it does a disaster).
  - AI now infiltrates political activism and criminal groups, too.
  - How Israel is using AI in the war in Gaza.
- How Do You Feel?
  - AI can now win an Oscar.

Read

April 14, 2025

Issue #97 - Faint Lighthouses
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Shopify CEO: Prove jobs can’t be done by AI before asking for more headcount.
  - 2/3 of jobs posted on Indeed include tasks that can be done by AI.
  - Sam Altman: If can't tell the difference, how much do you care?
  - Apple Intelligence's future is no more in the hands of John Giannandrea.
- Prompting
  - Seth Godin on learning how to prompt.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Meta has already started cheating on the performance of LLaMA.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Teachers love using AI, but the privilege is not for the students.
  - 20% of Salesforce code is now written by AI.
- How Do You Feel?
  - How I feel about LLMs, sometimes.

Read

April 3, 2025

Issue #96 - AI is Your Shadow Now
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - The AI Shadows project.
  - Information economy in the age of AI.
  - BGC: Most companies struggle to create value from their AI investments.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - Who's the best GPU cloud provider in 2025?
- The Tools of the Trade
  - We finally have a free AI voice viable for commercial applications.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Movie producers now make money out of AI deepfakes.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Governments vs. copyright laws.

Read

March 26, 2025

Issue #95 - Fact-Checkers
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - What happens when AI replaces white-collar trainees?
  - Accurate weather forecasts with a desktop computer.
  - China makes AI education compulsory in primary and secondary schools.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Dall-E 3 successor is remarkable, but not quite there yet.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Doctors are now using AI for "drug repurposing."
  - The UK will replace Civil Service jobs with AI.
  - How much AI content can human editors oversee?
  - An Italian newspaper publishes an edition entirely written by AI.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Andor creator won't publish the show script online because of AI.

Read

March 16, 2025

Issue #94 - The Competition is Human Workers
- Editorial
  - Has good writing a future?
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - OpenAI might charge $20,000 / Month for PhD-Level AI Agents.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - WanVideo 2.1 and APW 13.0 EA1 for ComfyUI.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Horizon Zero video game actress fears for her profession.
  - Of course, Christie's AI art auction was a massive success.

Read

March 5, 2025

Issue #93 - Insurmountable Challenges
- Editorial
  - The 400 lines of code insurmountable challenge
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - The Anthropic Economic Index and the Universal Computer Budget
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Thompson Reuters and Lyft are doing with AI.
- Prompting
  - GPT-4.5 and the "How to Get Rich Quickly" challenge
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Is OpenAI Sora worth $200/month?
  - APW 12.0 for ComfyUI is finally available, on premises and in the cloud,
- How Do You Feel?
  - Christie’s announces AI art auction. The world does not end.

Read

February 22, 2025

Issue #92 - Synthetic Arguments
- Prompting
  - My new system prompt for ChatGPT.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - How good o1 Pro and o3-mini-high really are at coding?
  - Can Cursor boost the productivity of your software engineers?
  - Is OpenAI Operator worth the $200 Pro subscription?

Read

February 8, 2025

Issue #91 - Is OpenAI Deep Research worth $200?
- The Tools of the Trade
  - OpenAI Deep Research: Deep Compared to What?

Read

February 1, 2025

Issue #90 - Chinese Whispers
- Editorial
  - Chinese Whispers.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - When Capital No Longer Needs Labor, How Does Labor Gain Capital?
  - US Copyright Office declared AI does not undermine copyright.
  - OpenAI confirms GPT-5
- The Tools of the Trade
  - - OpenAI o3 mini doesn't reason either.
- The Way We Work Now
  - $2,500 to let AI train on your bestseller.

Read

January 23, 2025

Issue #89 - (Un)Reasonable Mass Delusion
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Anthropic CEO offers a revised timeline for the AI takeover.
  - The AI agent Devin fails.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - The mass-delusion around DeepSeek R1.

Read

January 14, 2025

Issue #88 - Attention Farmers
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - John Deere claims its self-driving tractors and trucks will help address labor shortages.
  - First real-world test shows AI increases the chances of detecting breast cancer.
  - Wall Street Job Losses May Top 200,000 as AI Replaces Roles.
  - Sam Altman: in 2025 we may see the first AI agents “join the workforce.”
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Bloomberg News and Jumbo are doing with AI.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - HeyGen avatar models are now "outperforming real actors in many scenarios" says the CEO.
- The Way We Work Now
  - NASA took decades to develop a new rocket engine that AI designed in just 3 weeks.
  - YouTubers Are Selling Their Unused Video Footage to AI Companies.
  - AI financial advisers upsell better than their human counterparts.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Shockingly, people dislike Meta AI bots.

Read

December 21, 2024

Issue #87 - The Shrinking Workforce
- Editorial
  - Artificial general intelligence that isn't, jobs that aren't, AI agents that couldn't.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Everything looks the same, sounds the same, is the same.
  - The US Government wanted to control and constrain AI development.
  - Shutterstock develops a creator-friendly license for AI training.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - The Illusion Of AI Productivity
- The Tools of the Trade
  - NotebookLM gains the capability to host human guests.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Reporters Without Borders wants Apple Intelligence off.

Read

December 8, 2024

Issue #86 - Suppliers of Digital Labor
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - AI-powered Health Care is only for poor people.
  - The UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) discovers that its AI model to detect fraud in universal credit applications is biased.
  - Salesforce pitches itself as "supplier of digital labor".
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - People can't distinguish AI-generated poetry from human-made poetry and prefer the former.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Ferrero, Los Angeles Times, and AQR Capital Management are doing with AI.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - OpenAI o1, Meta LLaMA 3.3, and other me-too LLMs.
  - Hunyuan Video in APW 12.0 EA6 for ComfyUI.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Misinformation experts misinform harder with AI.

Read

December 1, 2024

Issue #85 - Talent Scouting
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - The US Department of Defense decides that it's silly to pay for commercial LLMs.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what IMAX, Panasonic, and Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) are doing with AI.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - How FLUX Redux transforms image generation.
  - It turns out AI can generate remarkable diagrams and mindmaps.
- The Way We Work Now
  - How to offer unlimited answers to strangers for $9.99 a month.
  - The University of South Australia returns to viva voce debates.

Read

November 24, 2024

Issue #84 - Digital Beings and Synthetic Worlds
- Editorial
  - Digital Beings and Synthetic Worlds
- Prompting
  - Anthropic releases a very helpful Prompt Improver.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - ChatGPT can now read macOS terminal apps or IDEs.
- The Way We Work Now
  - WSJ's Key Points are now summarized with AI

Read

November 10, 2024

Issue #83 - Perspectives Forge Destinies
- Editorial
  - How You Look at AI Forges Your Path Forward.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - The acrobatics AI startup executives make to avoid admitting AI's impact on jobs.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Amazon and Wendy's are doing with AI.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Video Generation Starts to Make Some Progress.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Professional Artist Uses AI Just Like I Do. His Network Leads to an Exhibition.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Polish Radio Station Fires Hosts to Interview Dead Nobel Laureate with AI

Read

November 3, 2024

Issue #82 - Cutting out the Middleman
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - GitHub's roadmap to writing code in natural language starts with fast prototyping.
  - OpenAI hints at the future of GPT and O models.
  - OpenAI and Microsoft's paths keep diverging.
- Prompting
  - Dall-E 3, PixelWave 0.3, and the importance of prompting.
- The Way We Work Now
  - LinkedIn launches an AI Recruiter.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Robert Downey Jr is ready to sue future generations of media producers.
  - Margaret Atwood: If I were 30 and in the arts, I'd be worried.

Read

October 26, 2024

Issue #81 - Synthetic Spies
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - OpenAI hires a Chief Economist.
  - Adobe tells artists to embrace AI or perish.
  - The US Department of Defense wants undetectable synthetic users.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Chipotle and NHS are doing with AI.
- Prompting
  - Prompts as Product Requirements Document.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Claude controlling your computer is not as fantastic as it sounds.
  - Google releases its AI text watermarking technology as an open source project, but...
- How Do You Feel?
  - Former Stability AI executive has a change of heart.

Read

October 20, 2024

Issue #80 - Cutthroat Workplaces
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - UK employers receive the highest number of applications in more than 30 years. It's AI, of course.
  - Of course, Anthropic is looking for more funding.
  - Of course, OpenAI and Microsoft's relationship is souring.
- Prompting
  - Two years later, prompting skills remain critical.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - My recommended style LoRAs for FLUX.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Adult entertainers start creating synthetic clones of themselves.
  - Honest students have to work extra hard to prove they don't use AI.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Penguin Random House formalizes its anti-AI policy.
  - Australian students are quite touchy when AI is in their exams.

Read

October 13, 2024

Issue #79 - The Canary in the Coal Mine
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - We'll have to work only until 2026, according to Anthropic CEO.
  - How Microsoft is muddying the water with CoPilot
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Maybe you can use LLaMA 3.1 405B without buying a supercomputer.
  - The bizarre way ChatGPT puts information about you in its memory.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Wimbledon retires 147-year-old job: the line judge.

Read

October 5, 2024

Issue #78 - The Always-Watching AI
- Editorial
  - The always-watching AI.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Contrarian MIT economist suggests AI can do too little to impact economy.
  - The perpetual garbage generator is getting faster.
- Prompting
  - How to give back ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode the voice of Scarlett Johansson.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - AP Workflow 11.0 for ComfyUI is now available.
  - Whisper now transcribes language 8x-50x faster than real time.
  - How OpenAI instructs GTP-4 to use the new Canvas UI.
- The Way We Work Now
  - UK social workers have started using AI for day-to-day activities.

Read

September 26, 2024

Issue #77 - The Puppeteer
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - AI-powered lie detectors are a bad idea.
  - Teacher-less school to open in UK.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - Generative AI adoption surpasses early PC and internet usage.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - OpenAI o1 is better.
  - Google NotebookLM is the third most extraordinary use of AI I've seen so far.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Indian filmmaker ditches musicians for AI-generated music.
  - Lionsgate Studios signs deal with Runway to train AI model on its movies and shows.
  - Australian child protection agency used ChatGPT a bit too much.
- How Do You Feel?
  - SAG-AFTRA secured protection against AI for 80 video games.
  - Sam Altman wants you to believe (and be distracted).

Read

September 14, 2024

Issue #76 - New Spell Book for New Witches and Wizards
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Maybe calling it "Apple Intelligence" backfired...
  - Audible recruits voice actors to train synthetic voices for audiobook.
  - Yuval Noah Harari is back with a new book about AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - Gartner publishes a Magic Quadrant for AI Code Assistants.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what M&S and Volkswagen are doing with AI.
- Prompting
  - How to interact with OpenAI o1.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - One year later, finally, AP Workflow has a web front end!
- The Way We Work Now
  - How are creatives using Midjourney professionally?
- How Do You Feel?
  - A WSJ bestseller author and first OpenAI prompt engineer is convinced that AI will soon be able to write good novels.

Read

September 2, 2024

Issue #75 - Claude 1, ChatGPT 0
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - The synthetic scientist developed by Sakana AI is not as capable as it sounds.
  - Klarna is ready to cut its workforce in half.
  - The UK Department for Education wants AI to help teachers
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - The cost of LLMs is cratering to zero. Is it enough to transform the economy?
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Claude 1, ChatGPT 0
- The Way We Work Now
  - Synthetic videos will be the norm for the new generation.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Philippines’ citizens are bracing for the impact of AI on their call center jobs.

Read

August 25, 2024

Issue #74 - Where do we go from here?
- Editorial
  - Where do we go from here?
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Now you can chat with your financial documents for free, in private.
  - A multi-platform universal chat app for centralized and local LLMs.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Yet another artist uses generative AI for his music videos.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Is generative AI ready to replace product image shooting?

Read

August 17, 2024

Issue #73 - The FLUX opportunity
- Editorial
  - The FLUX opportunity
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Build your own Midjourney

Read

July 28, 2024

Issue #72 - What IT decision-makers need to know about LLaMA 3.1
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - The threat of AI providers driven by ad revenue.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - Research org connected to OpenAI discloses key findings from a 3-year study related to UBI.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - What Business and IT leaders need to know about LLaMA 3.1
- Prompting
  - Jailbreak prompts for LLaMA 3.1 is already available.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Voice and motion-capture actors in the game industry go on strike over AI.

Read

July 21, 2024

Issue #71 - What are AI models good for?
- Editorial
  - What are AI models good for?
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - With AI, every knowledge worker will write software. But will they want to?
  - The AI bubble might burst, says Sequoia, but some of its logic is faulty.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - The future of AI depends on synthetic data. Synthetic data might depend on a billion synthetic personas.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - AP Workflow 10.0 for ComfyUI
  - AP Plot 1.0 for ComfyUI
- How Do You Feel?
  - Tate Modern is pro-AI and it shows it with a new exhibition.

Read

July 14, 2024

Issue #70 - The king is dead, long live the king!
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - New research suggests that LLMs are way more formulaic than we thought.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Amazon is doing with AI.
- Prompting
  - A different way to think about prompting.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Perhaps GPT-4o is not the best LLM on the market anymore.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Our relationship with AI won't be rational.
  - The Australian Association of Voice Actors (AAVA) is starting to get nervous.

Read

July 7, 2024

Issue #69 - To survive AI, bring out your feminine side
- Editorial
  - Job displacement can happen even without AI directly taking over the task.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Jeremy Howard on the creative limits of LLMs and their role in augmenting humans in research.
  - Will AI turn human expertise akin to what we share today in YouTube videos?
  - When fear of job displacement by AI turns into a conspiracy theory.
- Prompting
  - Perhaps we don't need LLM fine-tuning after all.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Generative AI music and business models.
  - Chrome now has its own LLM. You can use it via an API.
- How Do You Feel?
  - "The Last Screenwriter", the movie written by GPT-4o, is now out and free to watch.

Read

June 30, 2024

Issue #68 - New Aristocrats
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Anthropic Chief of Staff's radical view on the impact of AI on jobs.
  - A startup shows how much worse hiring is going to get because of AI.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what McDonald's, Formula 1, NBC, NHS, and St James’s Place Wealth Management are doing with AI.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Meta unlocked AI clones for Instagram influencers.
- Putting Lipstick on a Pig
  - Politicians finally figured out that they could use AI to look brighter than they are.

Read

June 23, 2024

Issue #67 - Your Job Shouldn't Have Been There in the First Place
- PSA
  - The new episode of Reality Distortion Fields is all about Apple Intelligence.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Mira Murati, OpenAI CTO, has a rather puzzling view about the impact of AI on jobs.
  - At least one reputable lawyer believes that Claude 3 can act as a Supreme Court Justice.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - New IMF report highlights "profound concerns about massive labour disruptions"
  - New Citigroup report on AI in Finance.
  - OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere projected annualized revenue.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Generative AI is quickly becoming akin to sex in at least one dimension.
  - Journalists are starting to question the licensing deals between their publishers and OpenAI.
  - Is the interaction with AI companions like Character.ai turning into an addiction?

Read

June 16, 2024

Issue #66 - A Non-Drunk Perspective on Apple Intelligence
- Editorial
  - A Non-Drunk Perspective on Apple Intelligence

Read

June 8, 2024

Issue #65 - Let's build a Social Media AI Manager with OpenAI custom GPTs
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Let's build a Social Media AI Manager with OpenAI custom GPTs.
  - How to Think about ComfyUI and the AP Workflow for ComfyUI.

Read

June 1, 2024

Issue #64 - Custom GPTs for all
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - The New York Times is insinuating that AI could take top management jobs. Just like we said one year ago.
  - 7,000+ IIT students yet to get placements this year.
  - Elon Musk predicts jobs will become like a hobby.
  - OpenAI continues to ink partnerships with the media industry.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) and the University of Oxford: almost nobody is using generative AI on a daily basis.
  - McKinsey: generative AI is spreading in 72% of the organizations we surveyed.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Custom GPTs can be used by everyone now. Here are ours.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Three researchers claim that GPT-4 can analyze financial statements and predict earnings better than humans.

Read

May 25, 2024

Issue #63 - Is the challenge of crafting the right prompt insurmountable?
- Editorial
  - Is the challenge of crafting the right prompt insurmountable?
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, talks about a future where AI models become so powerful that governments might not want to give them to their citizens.
  - Reid Hoffman trained a synthetic avatar with his appearance, voice, mannerisms, and talking style.
  - In the future, everybody might be able to write software just by describing a plan.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - AP Workflow 10.0 for ComfyUI Sneak Peek.
- The Way We Work Now
  - The life of a creative director running a synthetic model agency.
  - American Abductions, by Mauro Javier Cárdenas is a novel about AI written with AI.

Read

May 17, 2024

Issue #62 - Distributing Superpowers
- Editorial
  - Viable business models for tech companies in AI.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Audible is finally catching up with Apple in displacing voice narrators' jobs.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Northwestern Mutual, Hyatt and Discover are doing with AI.
- The Way We Work Now
  - How people are using Stable Diffusion professionally across fields.
- What Can AI Do for Me?
  - All the AIs that help writing and promoting Synthetic Work every week.

Read

May 13, 2024

Issue #61 - Is that your jaw the one on the floor?
- PSA
  - Announcing a new show: Reality Distortion Fields.
- Editorial
  - There's a growing disconnect between AI announcements and the reality of what AI can do.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Microsoft's strategy for large language models seems at odds with their partnership with OpenAI.
  - OpenAI introduces the new GTP-4o model. This is how I think about it.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - Microsoft 4th Annual Work Trend Index paints an odd story about AI in the workplace.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Exceptionally promising fine-tuned versions of LLaMA 3 to keep an eye on for company adoption.

Read

May 4, 2024

Issue #60 - $100M to Help Introvert Pilots
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - AI assistants allow managers to scrutinize their direct reports in ways previously impossible.
  - Chegg is down almost 72% in one year, probably because of ChatGPT.
  - Tata Consulting suggests that, in a year, AI will eliminate the need for call centers.
  - A new book tells the story of job hunting in the age of AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - According to a new survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, when AI is used in Texan companies, it impacts jobs in 23% of the cases.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Moderna and United Airlines are doing (or not doing) with AI.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Tennessee becomes the first US State to enact legislation protecting songwriters and performers from deepfake technology.

Read

April 27, 2024

Issue #59 - Can LLaMA 3 replace GPT-4 for you?
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Time to test the new LLaMA 3 70B.

Read

April 19, 2024

Issue #58 - Good Enough Commodities
- Editorial
  - When good enough LLMs turn expertise into a commodity.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - While BlackRock CEO is convinced AI will raise worker pay, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are considering reducing their junior analyst headcount by 66% and cut salaries.
  - Aaron Levie, BOX CEO, shares a very positive outlook on the impact of AI on jobs.
  - The International Monetary Fund expects the UK economy to benefit greatly from AI.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Honeywell is doing with AI.
- How Do You Feel?
  - The UK Trades Union Congress (TUC) is ready to propose new laws to protect workers from AI systems.
- The Way We Work Now
  - The exciting profession of AI Content Writer.

Read

April 12, 2024

Issue #57 - Survival Strategies
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Axios' strategy to survive AI. One that won't work.
  - BBC's strategy to survive AI. One that will work (for a little).
  - JPMorgan Chase's strategy to survive AI. One that has been tried many times before.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what US Department of Homeland Security, Texas Education Agency, and Trinity College Dublin are doing with AI.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - The AP Workflow 9.0 for ComfyUI is out.

Read

April 5, 2024

Issue #56 - Better to ask forgiveness than AI permission
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - I contracted Jon Stewart to record a segment of The Daily Show that would encapsulate the essence of Synthetic Work.
  - How much do startups care about the impact of AI on jobs?
  - Australia's government is delegating more and more decisions to AI.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Liverpool FC, the City of San Jose, and Visa are doing with AI.
- The Way We Work Now
  - UK ministers are testing generative AI to draft answers to parliamentary questions.
  - A Canadian lawyer submitted fake cases generated by AI to win a child custody case.
  - Emerging filmmakers believe that AI is leveling the playing field.

Read

March 29, 2024

Issue #55 - Battery Chickens
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Will AI lead workers to a future with greater impact on an organization?
  - What happens if we are hired by an AI and assigned to a manager?
  - The AI opportunity for consulting firms is starting to materialize.
  - IPPR warns that 8 million UK workers are at risk of losing their jobs to AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - A new fine-tuned LLM is released every 6 minutes.
  - Zscaler claims that enterprise AI usage skyrocketed by 595% in one year. It doesn't mean what you think it means.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Tyler Perry halts studio expansion after seeing OpenAI Sora demo.

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March 23, 2024

Issue #54 - Milking the AI Cow
- Editorial
  - What should humans do in a world of autonomous AI agents and self-improving AI models?

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March 16, 2024

Issue #53 - Clueless
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Yuval Noah Harari: it's the first time in human history that nobody has any idea how the world would look like in 20 years.
  - JPMorgan Chase & Co. developed an AI tool that can cut almost 90% of human labor in analyzing and forecasting cash flows.
  - The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will start using AI to X-ray cars at the border.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - Poorly done research suggests that text-to-image generative AI increases artist output quality but reduces novelty.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Amazon now turns URLs into product pages for its seller partners.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Five finalists in this year's Pulitzer Prizes for journalism admitted to using AI to write their stories.
  - UK care providers have started using ChatGPT and Gemini to create care plans.
- How Do You Feel?
  - What happens if the value of our work goes down?
- The Tools of the Trade
  - A new Stable Diffusion LoRA meant for architects allows you to generate images of physical models.

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March 9, 2024

Issue #52 - Erratic Oracles
- Editorial
  - Three rules to pick a large language model.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - A friar is Roman Catholic Church's and Italian government's AI ethicist.
- Prompting
  - How to compel ChatGPT into compliance with incentives and threats.

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March 2, 2024

Issue #51 - Eyes on the Prize
- Editorial
  - Where's the AI opportunity? And for whom?
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Klarna and Air Canada are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - Can LLMs beat the wisdom of the crowd and be used to automate forecasts?

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February 25, 2024

Issue #50 - Betting on the wrong horse
- Editorial
  - Where are the incentives?
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - A contrarian opinion on the limits of AI for health care.
  - Questions you must have an answer for to claim you have an AI strategy.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - How deeply can AI transform the Advertising industry?
- Prompting
  - Do LLM frameworks that rewrite user prompts really work?
- The Tools of the Trade
  - A new LoRA for architecture studio using Stable Diffusion

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Newsletter Archive (Year 1)

February 18, 2024 Free Edition

Issue #49 - Happy Anniversary
- Intro
  - To celebrate the first anniversary of Synthetic Work, access to the online archive will not require a paid membership from Feb 18 to Feb 24!

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February 18, 2024 Splendid Edition

Issue #49 - The Great Unification
- Intro
  - Dear Sage members, thank you.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Semafor, Ito En, and Roblox are doing with AI.
- Prompting
  - We can learn a lot from the leaked GPT-4 system prompt.

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February 10, 2024 Free Edition

Issue #48 - The forest for the trees
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Microsoft announced a new initiative to train 2 million Indians on AI by 2025.
  - The UK Intellectual Property Office fails to convince AI providers and news organizations to agree on a voluntary code of practice on copyrighted material.
  - Sainsbury’s is preparing to roll out automated tills, warehouse robots, and AI forecasting tools. Job cuts are not excluded.
- The Way We Work Now
  - The winner of the Japanese Akutagawa Prize reveals to have copied 5% of the book from ChatGPT.
  - A new book uncovers how employers are using AI candidate-screening algorithms.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Nobel Prize winner cautioned younger generations against piling into (STEM) subjects.

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February 10, 2024 Splendid Edition

Issue #48 - The Unbearable Lightness of Being Under Surveillance
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Transport for London (TfL), Co-Op, Burger King, and the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - Promising research shows the positive impact of chatbots on 129,400 patients within England’s NHS services.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - AP Workflow 8.0 for ComfyUI is out!

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February 4, 2024 Free Edition

Issue #47 - Love-Hate Relationships
- Intro
  - UBI & Welfare
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Publicis announced an investment of €300mn as part of its AI strategy.
  - The New York Times started building a team to explore the use of generative AI in its newsroom.
  - For the first time, the Brisbane Portrait Prize will accept entries completed by generative AI.
- UBI & Welfare
  - Is it really time to talk about an AI tax?

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February 4, 2024 Splendid Edition

Issue #47 - AI Expectations
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - More than 50% of surveyed UK undergraduates are using generative AI to help with their essays. They will be your future new hires.
  - GitClear published a study on developers using CoPilot and found a decline in code quality.
  - ARK Invest published its annual Big Ideas report, giving ample room to AI forecasts for this year and 2030.
- Prompting
  - New research confirms that GPT-4 is capable of generative creative business ideas if prompted in the right way.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - A little app to transcribe 45min YouTube video in 4 minutes.

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January 27, 2024 Free Edition

Issue #46 - My Copilot makes me feel better
- Intro
  - On the silent, ongoing transformation of our business processes because of AI.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Global CEOs surveyed by PWC expect headcount reduction of at least 5% in 2024 due to Generative AI.
  - A new MIT study suggests that computer vision won't replace (all) humans in the workplace for a while because it's still too expensive.
  - Synanthropic shows that AI can identify and explain analogy instrumentation like gauges.
  - Two geeks get together on a podcast and livestream the creation of an app with ChatGPT, from scratch, in 60 minutes.
- The Way We Work Now
  - After students, copywriters, too, are now accused of cheating by AI detectors.
- How Do You Feel?
  - New research on Replika users should give companies a reason to research the impact of LLMs on the mental health of their workers.

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January 27, 2024 Splendid Edition

Issue #46 - Format Police
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Bloomberg, Umicore, and Etsy are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - In 2023, Meta hoarded as many NVIDIA GPUs as Microsoft. Probably to train LLaMA 3.
  - Most popular AI services on the market collected 24B visitors in less than a year, suggesting an enormous opportunity ahead.
  - MedARC compared the medical knowledge of open access and proprietary LLMs, finding surprising results.
  - Google DeepMind researchers fine-tuned an LLM that outperforms doctors in differential diagnosis.
- Prompting
  - How you format your prompt matters. For some LLMs, it matters a lot.

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January 21, 2024 Free Edition

Issue #45 - DeathGPT
- Intro
  - It's time to seriously question the value of the resume and job applications.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Somebody used ChatGPT to diagnose a very rare medical condition that specialists couldn't identify, and shared the prompt to do the same.
  - The IMF warns that AI will affect almost 40% of jobs around the world.
  - Researchers used AI to predict the life and death of Danish citizens better than existing models.

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January 21, 2024 Splendid Edition

Issue #45 - Overconfidently skilled
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Arizona State University, Selkie, Deloitte, DPD, Eli Lilly and Novartis are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - Key insights about generative AI in the latest PWC Global CEO Survey.
  - The first Deloitte State of Generative AI in the Enterprise report is a triumph of overconfidence.
  - 2024 GDC survey of over 3,000 game developers reveals key adoption trends of generative AI.

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January 13, 2024 Free Edition

Issue #44 - As long as you can make 500,000 phone calls a day
- Intro
  - How disinformation fueled by AI might impact opinions, jobs, and the economy.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Thousands of surveyed engineers expect less hiring in the future due to AI.
  - The Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA), on strike since July 2023, accepted the use of AI to clone actor voices.
  - Duolingo cut 10% of its contractor workforce because AI.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Bland AI promises to automate more than 500,000 inbound or outbound phone calls with synthetic voices.
  - Pakistan’s former prime minister to campaign from behind bars on Monday, with his cloned voice.

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January 13, 2024 Splendid Edition

Issue #44 - Even a monkey could be an AI master with this
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what the US State of Pennsylvania, the US National Security Agency (NSA), and Nasdaq (perhaps) are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - High-quality prompting can save companies millions in inference costs.
- Prompting
  - A simple prompting technique to mitigate the bias in LLM answers before you deploy AI applications in productions.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - A mighty plugin to turn WordPress into an AI powerhouse for you and your lines of business.

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January 5, 2024 Free Edition

Issue #43 - The skill to be wanted
- Intro
  - Welcome to the Post-Real Era
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - US Supreme Court Chief Justice devotes his 2023 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary to artificial intelligence to ponder if AI will replace judges.
  - Reddit CEO reveals that his company is experimenting AI-powered moderation.
  - Deepdub, a startup that uses AI to clone voice actors, launches a royalty program.
- The Way We Work Now
  - The Prado museum used AI to verify the authenticity of a painting attributed to Raphael.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Human supremacists will be upset in discovering that AI models can, under the right conditions, be very creative.

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January 5, 2024 Splendid Edition

Issue #43 - My child is more intelligent than yours
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Golborne Medical Centre, The Clueless, British Airways, and the China Ministry of State Security are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - How the Financial Services industry is fine-tuning specialized LLMs for asset management and document analysis.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - A free online service to compare the answers of multiple LLMs to your prompts in edge use cases.

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December 30, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #42 - I'll watch the TV news only if Charles Darwin presents
- Intro
  - New Year's Resolutions.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Channel 1 previews the future of news broadcasting, and its implications.
  - Microsoft admits that AI will displace jobs and it's working with US labor unions to address the impact.
  - Eminent US cardiologist Eric Topol shows how AI is beating cardiologists and radiologists at diagnosing illness from almost invisible clues.
  - Terence Tao, prodigy professor of Mathematics at UCLA, believes AI could help mathematicians discover new theorems.
- The Way We Work Now
  - A group of artists uses MusicGen, an AI trained by Meta, to create an entire album in 24 hours.
- How Do You Feel?
  - The head of the UK judiciary is not too happy with the growing use of AI among judges.
- Putting Lipstick on a Pig
  - It turns out that Presto Automation is using human labor instead of AI to process 70% of fast-food drive-thru orders.

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December 30, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #42 - Say Hi to your future synthetic financial analyst
- Intro
  - Happy New Year.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Allen & Overy, Addleshaw Goddard, Travers Smith, Macfarlanesand, H&R Block, and Hiscox are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - How AI for financial management is being pushed by CFOs in midsized companies.
- Prompting
  - 26 tested recommendations to improve your prompting with GPT-3.5-Turbo, GPT-4, and LLaMA 2
- The Tools of the Trade
  - OpenBB Terminal, the open source alternative to Bloomberg Terminal, is now powered by AI

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December 9, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #41 - I simply asked my synthetic scientist to discover time travel
- Intro
  - The cultural bias of large language models, all of a sudden, matters.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - OpenAI is preparing to offer a self-service version of ChatGPT Enterprise, but COO Brad Lightcap doesn't think AI can transform businesses overnight.
  - DARPA is looking to train AI models to behave as synthetic scientists.
  - JP Morgan says AI tools are starting to generate revenue for the bank.
  - Goldman Sachs is losing the most AI talents to other financial institutions. Is it an attitude problem?
  - The UK Department for Education’s Unit for Future Skills puts London finance and insurance professionals on high alert for the expected impact of AI on the job market.

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December 9, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #41 - Hieroglyphics Didn't Matter That Much
- Intro
  - How to keep busy during the holidays.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Renaissance Hotels, EY, BlackRock, and Cali Group are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - End-of-year reports from PluralSight, Evident AI, and cnvrg.io give us a shower of charts on AI adoption trends and talent flows.
- Prompting
  - Anthropic explains why Claude 2.1 failed the Needle-in-a-Haystack test. To fix the problem just use clever prompt engineering.

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December 2, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #40 - I Didn't See It Coming
- Intro
  - How quickly is AI moving?
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Does OpenAI fantasize about new forms of economic organizations led by AI?
  - Who controls the performance of the AI you are adopting in your company?
  - Does your child want to become a meteorologist when he/she grows up?
- The Way We Used to Work
  - How creating and presenting slides has changed in 100 years.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Sports Illustrated is publishing poor-quality AI-generate news articles. Synthetic Work subscribers knew this 9 months before anybody else.
- Putting Lipstick on a Pig
  - Faking conference speakers for fun and profit.

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December 2, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #40 - Everybody cracks under pressure
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Changi Airport Group, the US Navy, and Israel Defense Forces are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - ChatGPT can lie to its users, even when explicitly told to not do so.
- Prompting
  - Just like in real life, we can ask an AI model to figure out what we really mean.

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November 25, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #39 - The Micro-Company
- Intro
  - Every human worker might become a micro-company supervising dozens of synthetic workers.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - The new OpenAI board member on the impact of AI on jobs.
  - Generative AI is already impacting a class of professionals: freelancers.
  - Accenture Technology CEO for EMEA says that AI could "free up" to 40% of working hours.
- The Way We Work Now
  - How AI has created jobs for minors.
- How Do You Feel?
  - The Publishing industry's fear of losing control of the content starts to become palpable.
- Putting Lipstick on a Pig
  - Somebody instructed a custom GPT to correct horribly misspelt typing.

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November 25, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #39 - The Balance Scale
- Intro
  - How to look at what happened with OpenAI, and what questions to answer next if you lead a company.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Koch Engineered Solutions, Ednovate, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - OpenAI GPT-4-Turbo vs Anthropic Claude 2.1. Which one is more reliable when analyzing long documents?

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November 18, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #38 - The Tower of Babel
- Intro
  - Should you bother learning how to use generative AI? What if it could change your career?
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - We might have real-time transcription of spoken audio before the end of 2024.
  - AI algorithm was far better than a biopsy at correctly grading the aggressiveness of sarcomas.
  - ServiceNow CEO suggests that AI will not displace software engineering jobs as the demand outstrips the supply.
- The Way We Work Now
  - 39,000 volunteers on social media have started using face recognition AI to give a name to unidentified dead bodies.

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November 18, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #38 - How to do absolutely nothing to prepare the best presentation of your career
- Intro
  - We are just getting started.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what the Australian government, GE Appliances, and Warner Music Group are doing with AI.
- What Can AI Do for Me?
  - Meet the new Synthetic Work's Presentation Assistant.

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November 11, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #37 - The 10,000x competition
- Intro
  - Welcome to the 10,000x competition, startup founders and VC firms.
  - I created a non-dumb desktop version of Alexa for my computer in 15 minutes. And I don't know how to code.
  - Synthetic Work now sports a next-generation AI-powered search engine.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Job descriptions for AI employees.
  - How much does OpenAI charge to train an AI model from scratch?
  - The former chairman of Walt Disney Studios, and co-founder and CEO of DreamWorks Animation, suggests that the cost of producing animated movies will be reduced by 90% thanks to AI.
- The Way We Work Now
  - The time for algorithmic job hunting has come, of course.

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November 11, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #37 - What is a search engine, really?
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what JPMorgan Chase, Johnson & Johnson, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Takeda Pharmaceutical, and Amazon are doing with AI.
- What Can AI Do for Me?
  - Let's build a next-gen search engine with the new OpenAI GPTs

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November 4, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #36 - The Dawn of the AI Corporation
- Intro
  - Synthetic Work reaches an important milestone.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Creating synthetic advisors vs synthetic analysts, and the legality of AI-led corporations.
  - Goldman Sachs lifts US GDP forecast to account for the impact of generative AI.
  - Can AI threaten the job of the field researcher? Can it at least decode animal language?

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November 4, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #36 - Immortals
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Citigroup, Twilio, Google, DataRobot, Roche, Universal Music, CD Projekt, and Apple are doing with AI.
- Prompting
  - Let's test the Drama Queen technique.

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October 28, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #35 - The Word of God
- Intro
  - A new episode of Tech From the Future and pictures from my press tour in the US to talk about AI.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - New York's major Eric Adams cloned his voice to reach citizens who don't speak English as their first language.
  - UK officials are using AI across eight government departments, for a wide range of decisions impacting the lives of millions of people./li>
  - A US lawyer decided to use ChatGPT to prepare the defense of his client. They lost the case.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Generative AI is infiltrating more and more into religious practice. As expected.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Amazon wants to study how workers and the general public people feel about the use of robots inside the warehouses. What robots, tho?
- Putting Lipstick on a Pig
  - Finally, I can be pretty, too, in corporate meetings, thanks to Google Meet.

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October 28, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #35 - X-Rays for Vans
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Deliveroo, Moody's, and Amazon are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - A creative application of generative AI produces accurate simulations of disease progression with limited data.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - A local ChatGPT that, finally, can be used to chat with multiple documents (yes, Excel spreadsheets, too).

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October 21, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #34 - Do you speak Fashion?
- Intro
  - Generative AI is influencing the way we behave. As individuals, as workers, as companies and, eventually, as a society.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - If fashion is a language, can a large language model manipulate it as it does with English?
  - Will traffic police exist in a future full of self-driving cars and AI-powered traffic lights?
  - Stack Overflow reduced its headcount by 28%. Who will be next?
- The Way We Work Now
  - Australian schools have capitulated to artificial intelligence.

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October 21, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #34 - Talk to me
- Intro
  - Synthetic Work's AI Adoption Tracker now documents 100 early adopters and use cases around the world
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what US Space Force, Accenture, and Spotify are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is exploring the use of generative AI to forecast inflation. The results are surprising.
- What Can AI Do for Me?
  - My new AP Workflow 5.0 is ready to generate images at scale for industrial applications
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Is the new Descript voice cloning service ready for prime time?

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October 14, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #33 - How would you like a career as a car mechanic?
- Intro
  - How much do governments really think about the impact of AI on jobs and careers?
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Vinod Khosla articulates his optimistic vision about the future of work in an interview at the All-In Summit.
  - The London School of Economics (LSE) and Google published an invaluable 90-page report on how newsrooms across the planet are using generative AI.
  - Geoffrey Hinton, the godfather of Artificial Intelligence, talks about the risk of mass unemployment by AI in a new interview with 60 Minutes.

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October 14, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #33 - You're not blind anymore
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what BBC, The Washington Post, and Thomson Reuters are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - What can we do by training an AI with the lifetime of the most intelligent person on Earth, educated to be a business/science/engineering/etc. leader, and recorded as he/she goes through life and is successful?
- What Can AI Do for Me?
  - Here's how the new GPT-4V might transform customer support.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Finally, a tool I can recommend to organize ChatGPT chats.

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October 7, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #32 - Moving Targets
- Intro
  - Building a Human-AI company.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - The chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase confirms that AI will displace some jobs, and predicts a work week of 3.5 days for the next generation.
  - The former chief economist at the US Department of Labor believes that AI is going to eliminate millions of jobs.
  - GitHub CEO promises that "The demand for software developers will continue to outweigh the supply".
- The Way We Work Now
  - Some schools have accepted that AI is here to stay and defined "acceptable AI uses" for their students.
- How Do You Feel?
  - OpenAI encourages you to have a quite emotional, personal conversation with the new talking ChatGPT.
- Putting Lipstick on a Pig
  - Daniel Dennett believes AI will destroy trust and, with it, civilization.

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October 7, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #32 - Hackathons For Fun and Profit
- Intro
  - Search is coming.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Walmart, the UK Court of Appeal Civil Division, and JP Morgan Chase are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - The new GPT-4V model unlocks a wide range of business applications
- What Can AI Do for Me?
  - Let's organize an internal hackathon for the company employees to invent new business products with generative AI.

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September 30, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #31 - The Sky Is the Limit
- Intro
  - The top AI experts in the world, the ones that build foundation AI models used by the rest of the planet, have no idea of what are the limits of generative AI.
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - A couple of economists insinuate that employers could use spyware to monitor their employees' activities and use that data to train AI models to replace them.
  - The Writers Guild of America (WGA) agrees on a contract that regulates the use of AI in Hollywood
  - Two CEOs suggest that their AI-focused startups create jobs in the film industry, rather than destroy them.
- The Way We Work Now
  - On top of replacing humans in the act of creating art, AI is also being tested as a better art authenticator and a better art curator.
- How Do You Feel?
  - A university math professor claims he's never used ChatGPT and never will. Yet, he speaks about AI at conferences.

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September 30, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #31 - The AI Council
- Intro
  - How it feels to build a company with human collaborators and AIs.
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what the European Central Bank, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, and the Australian Federal Police are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - GPT-4 performs exceptionally well in diagnosing arcane CPC medical cases (with the right prompt). Are large language models the future of diagnoses?
- The Tools of the Trade
  - What if you could ask the advice of the top experts in the world in their fields, and watch them debate the business challenge you are facing? Now you can.

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September 23, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #30 - Prison Labor
- Intro
  - My new YouTube channel is live!
  - The recording of Jobs 2.0: The AI Upgrade podcast is now available!
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - What happens when you ask GPT-4 to take a creative thinking test? It beats humans, that's what happens.
  - UK researchers have started the tests to see if AI could replace air traffic controllers.
  - US Senator Bernie Sanders suggests using AI to give workers more paid time off.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Prison labor gets a new meaning in the age of AI.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Not every artist is upset about the advent of generative AI.

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September 23, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #30 - AI is the Operating System of the Future
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what McKinsey, Carrefour, and Grupo Bimbo are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - New research conducted on BCG consultants shows that GPT-4 is a remarkable productivity booster.
- Prompting
  - Want to know what Custom Instructions Seth Godin uses for his ChatGPT?
- What Can AI Do for Me?
  - How to turn negative thoughts into positive and engaging social media updates with GPT-4.
- The Tools of the Trade
  - A new open source tool shows what GPT-4 can do without constraints. It's like watching the future of operating systems.

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September 16, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #29 - Modern Love
- Intro
  - A new YouTube channel and an upcoming podcast
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Project Gutenberg, Microsoft, and MIT worked together to create an audiobook version of 5,000 open access books.
  - A new bill in the US state of California could force companies to hire a trained human safety operator for self-driving trucks.
  - Freelance job websites are seeing an explosion of demand for AI skills.
- The Way We Work Now
  - Comedians have started using AI to write jokes.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Voice actors discover their voices cloned and used to say dirty things in video games.
- Putting Lipstick on a Pig
  - Dating websites want to use AI to coach people on how to flirt online.

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September 16, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #29 - The AI That Whispered to Governments
- Intro
  - If you were one of the most powerful tech companies in the world, and you were given the possibility to whisper in the ears of your government, could you resist the temptation of taking advantage of it?
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what Propak, JLL, and Activision are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - The better the AI, the less recruiters pay attention to job applications.
- Prompting
  - Let's take a look at a new technique to generate summaries dense with information with large language models. Does it really work?
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Is lipsynched video translation ready for industrial applications?

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September 9, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #28 - Can't Kill a Ghost
- Intro
  - What's left for artists to do?
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - A survey conducted by Randstad highlights the lack of upskilling for the global workforce on AI.
  - The organizers of Eurovision are considering banning AI-generated songs from the competition.
  - UK publishers are urging the Prime Minister to protect works ingested by AI models.
- The Way We Work Now
  - The US Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler on how AI might impact the way people trade.
- How Do You Feel?
  - According to Pew Research, 52% of Americans feel more concerned than excited about the increased use of artificial intelligence.
- Putting Lipstick on a Pig
  - Microsoft, Google, and Zoom are now ready to help you reach the maximum level of alienation during corporate meetings.

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September 9, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #28 - Use AI, Save 500 Lives Per Year
- Intro
  - What is software?
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what DoorDash, Kaiser Permanente, and BHP Group are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart
  - Researchers have used large language models to analyze the impact of corporate culture on financial analyst reports. Can this approach be used elsewhere?
- The Tools of the Trade
  - Let's use a voice generation tool to produce an audio version of Synthetic Work

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September 2, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #27 - Blind Trust
- Intro
  - What happens when AI models become really good at generating charts and diagrams, and we automate their production at scale?
- What Caught My Attention This Week
  - Harvard Business School professor on how AI could impact the workforce.
  - Two novel approaches in using AI in conjunction with brain-computer interfaces to give a faster voice to patients.
  - Vinod Khosla, one of the most famous and successful venture capitalists in the world, on how much of the existing jobs will be taken over by AI.
  - The International Labour Organization (ILO) offers a positive outlook on the impact of AI on jobs.
- How Do You Feel?
  - Companies are increasingly concerned about the reputational damage associated with announcing the use of AI to augment or replace the workforce.
- Putting Lipstick on a Pig
  - Scientific journals are getting inundated with research written with ChatGPT.

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September 2, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #27 - Sport is for Mathematicians
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine?
  - Learn what General Motors, RXO, XPO, Phlo Systems, and Amazon Prime Video are doing with AI.
- Prompting
  - Learn how to use ChatGPT Custom Instructions to automatically apply the How to Prompt best practices to every chat.
- What Can AI Do for Me?
  - Learn how to use Custom Instructions to turn GPT-4 into a marketing advisor following the lessons of Seth Godin.

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August 26, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #26 - I have a bridge to sell you
- AI is as accurate as two radiologists, when it comes to breast cancer screening, according to the largest study of its kind.
- OpenAI suggests that its GPT-4 model could take over one of the most complex and toxic jobs in the world: content moderation.
- Wimbledon, the oldest tennis tournament in the world, is considering replacing line judges with AI.
- The CEO of WPP, one of the largest ad agencies in the world, says that savings from generative AI can be “10 to 20 times.”
- Not every software developer is thrilled about generative AI. Some are really concerned for their future.
- eBay has started using generative AI to embellish the products sold by its users to the point of turning sellers’ listings into commercials.

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August 26, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #26 - How to break the news, literally
- What's AI Doing for Companies Like Mine? Learn what Estes Express Lines, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, and JLL are doing with AI.
- A Chart to Look Smart McKinsey offered a TCO calculator to CIOs and CTOs who want to embrace generative AI. Something is not right.
- What Can AI Do for Me? How I used generative AI to power the new Breaking AI News section of this newsletter. You can do the same in your company.
- The Tools of the Trade A new, uber-complicated, maximum-friction, automation workflow to generate images with ComfyUI and SDXL.

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August 19, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #25 - The Clean-Up Commando
- The role of the digital artist in the video game industry is changing. Some are not proud of how they see themselves now.
- The UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) issued the recommendation to start using AI for radiotherapy treatment performed by the National Health Service (NHS).
- Consulting companies are competing to announce enormous investments in generative AI.
- The Drucker Institute suggests a correlation between the companies that invest in AI and their business performance.
- AI experts are now offered salaries between half and a million US dollars but, in Europe, there are very few to hire.
- Advertising agency Ogilvy calls for transparency in the use of generative AI in commercials and ads. Why?

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August 19, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #25 - Hypnosis for Business People
- Maersk and Wesco have started using generative AI to negotiate contracts with their suppliers.
- Unilever and Siemens are using generative AI to analyze their suppliers and find replacements.
- Travelers Cos. is using AI to assess the condition of insured sites and assist claim management.
- Ubisoft is testing the use of generative AI for a wide range of applications, from game design to scriptwriting.
- In the What Can AI Do for Me? section, we learn a technique to improve the quality of our corporate presentations with AI-generated images.

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August 12, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #24 - Cannibals
- A rare interview with the Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and his view on the integration of AI in business environments.
- Billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya on the impact of AI on software development and the implications for public companies pressured by activist investors.
- A leaked conversation during an Adobe staff meeting about the risk of cannibalizing the company’s own business model with AI.
- The New England Journal Of Medicine published a very interesting article on the adoption of AI in the Health Care industry.
- The collaboration between a rapper, Lupe Fiasco, and Google is a great example of collaboration between humans and AI. For now.
- A new report from the UK House of Commons Committee touches on how workers might feel in a workplace where they are surveilled and judged by tech and AI.

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August 12, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #24 - The Ideas Vending Machine
- The ad agency WPP uses generative AI to create job postings, draft communication messages to attract new talent, and more.
- The London Stock Exchange Group is testing generative AI models fine-tuned in collaboration with Microsoft.
- Tinder is using AI to automatically select the best picture from the photo album of a user.
- Australia’s Home Affairs Department used ChatGPT for software development and other tasks for a period.
- In the What Can AI Do for Me? section we see how GPT-4 can be used to generate perfectly legit business ideas. For real.

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August 5, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #23 - One day, studying history will be as gripping as watching a horror movie
- Let's see how we can use a trip to Rome and generative AI to show a glimpse of the future of Education.
- OpenAI's CEO makes it crystal clear: “Jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop.”
- What's the future of Q&A websites powered by human interaction? Stack Overflow traffic is down 40% year-over-year.
- The UK House of Lords is mildly concerned about the impact of AI on jobs. Only mildly.
- McKinsey believes that 29.5% of the hours worked in the US economy will be taken over by generative AI by 2030.
- Popular YouTube gamer Kwebbelkop transitioned to a synthetic version of himself running his channel.

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August 5, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #23 - Your Own, Personal, Genie
- News Corp Australia revealed that they are using generative AI to publish 3,000 news a week
- Wayfair is using text-to-image AI models to show how you could redecorate your living rooms with furniture that might resemble the ones in their catalog
- 3M Health Information Systems, Babylon Health, and ScribeEMR have adopted the new AWS HealthScribe service to automatically generate clinical notes from doctor-patient conversations
- In the Prompting section, we discover that large language models might lose accuracy with larger context windows.
- In the The Tools of the Trade section, we use LM Studio and the new Stable Beluga 2 model to create a personal AI assistant that runs on our computers.

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July 22, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #22 - The Dawn of the Virtual YouTuber
- YouTube’s first Culture & Trends Report reveals some numbers about the interest in virtual creators among the YouTube audience.
- The Screen Actors Guild—American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) joins the Writers Guild of America (WGA) in an unprecedented strike focused on generative AI.
- 8,000 authors have signed a letter asking the leaders of companies including Microsoft, Meta Platforms and Alphabet to not use their work to train AI systems without permission or compensation.
- The cost of producing well-written material has fallen 10 thousand fold over the course of the past year and for the first time in almost 125 years.
- Several large news and magazine publishers are discussing the formation of a new coalition to address the impact of artificial intelligence on the industry
- The startup Air shows how salespeople all around the world won't have to be on the phone anymore going forward. Next step: do not show up at the office either.

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July 22, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #22 - What AI should I wear today?
- The New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) has implemented facial recognition systems in the subway to identify people who are not paying their fares.
- Eurostar launched the world’s first walk-through biometric corridor to access its trains.
- G/O Media, publisher of The Onion and Gizmodo, among the others, has begun publishing AI-generated articles.
- In the What Can AI Do for Me? section, we see how to use GPT-4 Code Interpreter to ask questions about our website performance that Google Analytics can't answer without attending a 72 days class.
- In the Prompting section, I recommend what use case is more suitable for seven AI systems that can be used today.

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July 16, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #21 - Ready to compete against yourself?
- The new AI models of the week, GPT-4 with Code Interpreter and Claude 2, have the potential to transform the way we work. Let's see why.
- New York City is now enforcing a law to regulate the use of AI in hiring processes.
- AI is infiltrating the agenda of the Labour Party in the UK.
- Some artists are not very happy with Adobe and its new generative AI system Firefly.
- The Boston Consulting Group surveyed nearly 13,000 people in 18 countries on what they feel about AI.

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July 16, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #21 - Investigating absurd hypotheses with GPT-4
- In the Prompting section, we discover the ELI5 technique, comparing how well it works with both OpenaI GPT-4 with Code Interpreter and Anthropic Claude 2.
- In the What Can AI Do for Me? section, we use the GPT-4 with Code Interpreter capabilities to analyze two unrelated datasets, overlay one on top of the other in a single chart, and investigate correlation hypotheses.

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July 9, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #20 - £600 and your voice is mine forever
- The Japanese bank Mizuho has decided to give access to generative AI tools to 45,000 workers.
- The members of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) have agreed on a new contract, and there’s a provision about AI.
- Voice actors discovering that their voices, and their jobs, are being replaced by AI.
- GroupM estimates that AI is likely to be involved with at least half of all advertising revenue by the end of 2023.
- Top UK universities are changing their mind (and their code of conduct) about the use of generative AI.
- The two Levidow, Levidow & Oberman lawyers who cited fake ChatGPT-generated legal research in a personal-injury case get fined.

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July 9, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #20 - When you are uncertain about triggering WWIII or not, ask ChatGPT
- Bridgewater Associates reveals how the company is thinking about and using large language models to formulate investment strategies.
- McCann Worldgroup used AI to make individual signs and menus for owners of Mexican hot dog and hamburger stands.
- Insilico Medicine started the human trial phase of a lung disease drug designed by generative AI.
- The US Air Force is testing various large language models, including Scale AI Donovan.

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July 2, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #19 - Let's collapse some models, there's money to be made
- Students don't feel too reassured about their future in a world powered by AI. If only they could read Marc Andreessen's blog posts...
- A Stanford professor and a former Google PM make the case that companies must be much bolder than in the past to avoid mass unemployment due to AI.
- GitHub publishes an interesting update on the adoption of Copilot and attempts a calculation of the economic impact of AI-powered software development.
- People working for Amazon Mechanical Turk and cutting corners with AI might be contributing to a dreadful-sounding phenomenon called "Model Collapse".
- Outset.ai is the latest startup promising to make research a walk in the park. What could go wrong?

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July 2, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #19 - How to turn Visual Studio Code into the ultimate writing tool for people who don't write a single line of code
- A very long explanation of what extensions, features, and configurations I used to transform a tool for software developers, Visual Studio Code, into the ultimate tool for writing long-form English content pieces like the Synthetic Work newsletter.

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June 25, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #18 - Mixed Intelligence Couples
- How to think about the information you get from Synthetic Work and what to do with it.
- Jakob Nielsen, a pioneer of user experience (UX), has opinions on the generative AI prompt.
- Nikon Peru launches a (very) defensive marketing campaign titled Natural Intelligence.
- The German tabloid Bilt announced it will cut job positions, replacing people with AI.
- GitHub reveals that 92% of U.S.-based developers are already using AI coding tools both in and outside of work.
- Tim Urban sees a future where kids will have one human parent and one AI parent.
- The CEO of VTech is preparing to launch Teddy bears powered by generative AI to read bedtime stories.

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June 25, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #18 - How to roll with the punches
- IKEA revealed that it has used AI to handle 47% of customers’ queries to their call centers since 2021.
- Marvel used generative AI to create the opening credit sequence of the new TV Series Secret Invasion.
- More than 200 game studios are already using AI to create new games according to a new survey published by the VC firm A16Z.
- In the What Can AI Do for Me? section, we learn how to use GPT-4 as a coach to learn how to face criticism.
- In the The Tools of the Trade section, we discover LM Studio, an invaluable tool to test open access AI models

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June 18, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #17 - Robopriests
- Accenture announced plans to double its AI staff to 80,000, just three months after shedding 19,000 jobs in a cost-cutting effort.
- India’s Happiest Minds Technologies is planning to hire 1,300 software engineers, the IT services firm’s biggest staff growth push ever.
- The Challenger Job Cuts May 2023 Report highlights 3,900 positions eliminated in the US because of AI.
- St. Paul’s church in the Bavarian town of Fuerth arranged an AI church service that drew hundreds.
- Somebody working in pediatric cancer diagnostics thinks that the only sensible thing to do is to use every means possible to enhance the work of his/her colleagues with GPT-4 to potentially save the lives of children.
- Salesforce decided that the world needs Sales GPT, Service GPT, Marketing GPT, Commerce GPT, Slack GPT, and many other products with poorly chosen names.

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June 18, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #17 - How to prompt to buy a burger
- White Castle has started using generative AI to replace drive-thru employees.
- Chegg articulates how it plans to use GPT-4 to deliver personalized tutoring to its customers.
- Netflix unveiled how they are using AI to create more engaging trailers for the shows and movies in their catalog.
- In the Prompting section, we explore two techniques: Ask for Variants and Choose the Best Variant.
- In The Tools of the Trade section, we discover how Vivaldi browser can let you use Bing Chat without downloading Microsoft Edge.

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June 11, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #16 - Discover Your True Vocation With AI: The Dog Walker
- For the first time in history, we are voluntarily seeking the help of an external entity that spoonfeeds us with what to write and, subtly, what to think. What does it mean?
- Marc Andreessen, the most famous venture capitalist in the world, patiently explains to us why AI will save the world, including our jobs—finally a positive outlook!
- Mo Gawdat, the former Chief Business Officer of Google X, the moonshot factory of Alphabet, emotionally explains to us why AI will destroy our jobs—finally a negative outlook!
- Gita Gopinath, deputy managing director of the IMF, for the first time, expresses serious concerns about the impact of AI on jobs.
- Below the ivory towers, a couple of people, replaced by their employers with ChatGPT, are now seeking jobs as dog walkers and plumbers. But they are just two. They don't matter.

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June 11, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #16 - The Devil’s Advocate
- McKinsey and Company has allowed almost 15,000 employees in its workforce to use ChatGPT and other AI tools.
- The Financial Times embraces generative AI with a new editorial policy while CNET has to rectify theirs.
- BuzzFeed is now using AI to power a second section of its website, dedicated to recipe generation. The CEO believes that "over the next few years, generative AI will replace the majority of static content."
- Blackstone is using AI to help the employees of its portfolio companies to reduce the health costs associated with diabetes.
- In the Prompting section, we review a technique I call The Devil’s Advocate to help you make better decisions.

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June 1, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #15 - Well, worst case, I'll take a job as cowboy
- It's time for a long exploration of an extreme scenario where AI impacts all white-collar jobs at once. Sigh.
- Ada Palmer, a professor of history at the University of Chicago, is positive about the impact of AI on jobs but advocates for strong government policies.
- David Autor, a professor at MIT, widely regarded as one of the greatest labor economists in the world, is equally positive about the future of work in an AI world.
- The latest survey conducted by Pew Research Centers suggests that a lot of people are talking about something they didn't even try: ChatGPT.
- The National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) fires its call center employees to replace them with AI, then shuts down AI.
- Customers services workers start to feel that employers have not been entirely upfront with their workers about the ways they are incorporating generative AI.

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June 4, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #15 - I'd like to buy 4K AI experts, thank you
- Wells Fargo is using large language models to help determine what information clients must report to regulators and how they can improve their business processes.
- Carvana used generative AI to produce 1.3 million personalized video ads for its customers to celebrate 10 years in business.
- Deutsche Bank is using AI to scan the portfolios of its clients and suggest new investments.
- Amazon is using computer vision AI models to screen items for damage before orders are shipped to customers.
- JP Morgan Chase is preparing to launch a generative AI service like GPT-4 to offer investment advice to its clients.
- In the What Can AI Do for Me section, let's see how GPT-4 can help us fully document a corporate procedure as mortally boring as opening a bank account.

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May 26, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #14 - My job-hunting AI will get in touch to talk with your recruiting AI tomorrow
- New York City just passed a law to regulate how AI is used to hire candidates. Let's just hope it doesn't end up like the EU cookie consent nightmare.
- It turns out that generative AI to create content that reaches the top of Google Search in a matter of two days. One every three people around you will turn into a SEO expert by next week.
- A startup promises to use generative AI to place virtual products in videos. YouTube will copy this in three...two... Influencers to be rich in three...two...
- OpenAI GPT-4 sort of passed an official Radiology exam, performing way better than ChatGPT. Radiologists can still count on their human creativity for...they'll find something.
- DJs and nerd musicians are using AI to create completely new type of music. Meanwhile, other people are busy using AI to copy the existing type of music to get rich.
- UK headteachers are quite concerned about AI and don't want to wait for the government to issue guidance. Wait until they see how much McKinsey costs to give them a speedy answer.
- Smart candidates now use AI to generate resumes and cover letters, fooling HR professionals and hiring managers. Who thought that lying would be so much fun?

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May 26, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #14 - How to prepare what could be the best presentation of your life with GPT-4
- How to write a presentation with GPT-4 using many of the techniques in the How to Prompt section of Synthetic Work

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May 21, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #13 - If you create an AGI that destroys humanity, I'll be forced to revoke your license
- US Senators and OpenAI agree that the US government should be able to issue a license to train an artificial general intelligence and revoke it if it destroys humanity. A flawless plan.
- BT announced plans to cut 40,000 and 55,000 jobs by 2030. They feel that bullish about generative AI.
- SEC Chair warns that the next financial crisis might be caused by generative AI and not Robinhood disabling the buy button again.
- The CNET overworked journalists don't seem relieved at all that AI has started writing articles on their behalf.
- Quiz: let's say that your dart is an AI. How many figurines can you hit on a dartboard depicting 100 professions?
- A psychiatrist starts using ChatGPT to describe patients' mental health. Now she can make $300 / hour without even saying a word.
- Philosopher Daniel Dennett suggests that our society might be on the verge of collapse if generative AI is allowed to pose as real people. Everybody else thought that human trust is overrated.
- You can now rent a synthetic clone of a real woman and pretend she's your girlfriend. But we are well-mannered people and we don't use forbidden words to describe the practice.

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May 21, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #13 - Hey, great news, you potentially are a problem gambler
- KPMG has started using a customized version of ChatGPT that finds the right experts to pitch for a proposal within a 10,000-people database.
- The US Air Force is testing if artificial intelligence can fly F-16 fighter jets.
- Flutter Entertainment and Entain use AI to identify the so-called problem gambling.
- New Balance is using AI for footwear design.
- The Wildlife Conservation Society is using AI to design routes with the highest chances of finding poacher traps for park rangers in Cambodia.
- In the Prompting section, we make a breakthrough as we discover how AI can help solve the You don’t know what you don’t know problem.

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May 12, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #12 - ChatGPT Sucks at Making Signs
- Ford’s CEO doesn't think he can upskill his entire workforce quick enough: I don’t think they are going to make it. Ford employees, if you are reading this: surpriseeeeee!!!
- DeepMind's co-founder thinks there will be a serious number of losers among white-collar workers because of AI. Like when you don't scratch the right lottery ticket, but with a lot more effort and a huge debt.
- The American science fiction writer Ted Chiang provokes: AI researchers are increasing the concentration of wealth to such extreme levels that the only way to avoid societal collapse is for the government to step in.
- New research uses AI to rephrase human written communication in a more empathetic way and improve interactions. No more fights for logo placement on the Nascar slide inside big corporations?
- Stephen Marche is the nth writer using ChatGPT to compose his masterpiece. Surely, it will be remembered 100 years from now.
- The Writers Guild of America feels like this AI thing is a bit threatening and goes on strike. The BBC shows them they are right.
- A project to create an unstoppable fashion blogger shows how we'll have infinite garbage as long as somebody consumes it.

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May 12, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #12 - And You Thought That Horoscopes Couldn't Be Any Worse
- MakeMyTrip is rolling out an AI voice assistant to help customers book flights and hotels
- Wendy’s is starting to use GPT-4 to take customers’ orders for their drive-through service
- Citadel Securities confirms that the market maker has completed the negotiation phase with OpenAI
- Takeda Pharmaceutical is completing the trial tests for a new psoriasis drug designed by AI in six months
- Ingenio has started using OpenAI models to generate articles about astrology.
- In the Prompting section, we explore how much you can achieve with a good prompt and when that is not good enough anymore
- In the Tools of the Trade section we explore the glorious MacGPT

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May 5, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #11 - The Nutella Threshold
- We now have a Referral Program to read the Splendid Edition of Synthetic Work for free. Potentially.
- The World Economic Forum published its Future of Jobs Report 2023.
- IBM CEO says “I could easily see 7,800 jobs replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period.”
- Chegg Inc. share price crashed from $17.60 (close) to $8.80 (low) after the CEO said that ChatGPT is having an impact on their new customer growth rate during the earnings call.
- The CEO of TurnItIn says that thanks to AI, in 18 months, he will only need 20% of the few hundred engineers he’s employing now. And that he’ll hire them from high school.
- Yuval Noah Harari told The Telegraph that our economic system sees millions of people as completely useless.
- The godfather of artificial intelligence, Geoffrey Hinton, resigned from a post at Google he held for more than a decade so that he could openly talk about the risks of AI without damaging the company.
- New academic research shows that patients prefer the interaction with ChatGPT to the one with doctors.
- Bing AI can be used to hide our inadequacy on Twitter, LinkedIn, and any other online community.

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May 5, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #11 - Personalized Ads and Personalized Tutors
- Khan Academy roped in OpenAI's GPT-4 to create Khanmigo, an AI tutor who never had to endure school lunches.
- UC San Diego Health & UW Health deployed AI to draft patient responses; Doctors: "Our new favorite colleague doesn't even need coffee breaks!"
- WPP spiced up ad campaigns with AI, because who wouldn't want a virtual Shah Rukh Khan selling chocolates?
- VentureBeat is rolling out AI-assisted articles, giving reporters a new non-human entity to blame for typos.
- King (the maker of Candy Crush) utilizes AI for game testing, because apparently, humans alone couldn't get enough of crushing candies.
- GrammarlyGO is our Tool of the Trade for the week.
- The Step-by-step reasoning is our Prompting technique of the week.

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April 25, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #10 - The Memory of an Elephant
- New research might revolutionize how much AI can remember for every conversation. And that completely changes the things that we can do with it.
- Do you have a unique value proposition? If you don't, your audience might just prefer AI-generated content
- Just Eat is having a great time using automated dismissal technology
- A Fortune company gave its customer service reps generative AI to help them answer customers' calls. Performance increased noticeably.
- While Drake's music label is busy suing to death his fans, Grimes proposes her fans to split the profit if they use her voice to make new songs
- People reveal secrets they don’t tell anybody else to their AI
- Why bother with dating apps when the AI can do it for you? Just show up to the restaurant that GPT-4 has booked for you with the partner of the day.

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April 28, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #10 - The Fed Whisperer
- Coca-Cola formally announces that it doesn't give a crap about the legal issues surrounding generative AI and it's using it like there's no tomorrow
- Walmart is using AI to automate the tedious negotiation with suppliers. No, you can't do the same with your significant other. Yet.
- Somehow, JPMorgan Chase & Co is trying to decode the language used in Fed meetings to find signals to trade. Politicians next?
- Three powerful techniques to reduce the number of tokens (and your bill) in the interaction with GPT-4: The Power of No, Memory Consolidation, and Alien Language Translation

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April 21, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #9 - If You Have Experience With Technologies Like AGI, You Are Encouraged To Apply
- A big PR agency in China has stopped hiring because generative AI is more than enough. Let's see the impact on the image of their clients.
- Independent and employed Chinese artists start to see dramatically fewer job commissions from gaming studios. They now just have to generate the image of a dinner, and they'll be fine.
- The UK Trades Union Congress doesn't find this whole AI thing very amusing.
- New research suggests that observing the AI crushing us in almost every single activity might help us think out of the box.
- When I grow up, I want to be a Knocker Upper.
- AI startups now require candidates to spend a lifetime learning new technologies from the second they are invented and then travel back in time to apply for jobs in the past.
- If you are an AI company and you are marketing the product or the features, you are missing the point.
- Making up research is now a completely legitimate activity. You don't even have to pretend anymore that you did the work.

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April 21, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #9 - The Tools of the Trade
- HSBC launches a new AI-powered index. It looks a lot like the old one, let's hope the performance is better.
- Aberhart Farms has been testing drones for weeding for years. Probably because it's very fun.
- 88Nine Radio Milwaukee is using AI to power an experimental radio station. The human radio host still doesn't suspect anything.
- How to use The ~~Annoying~~ Curious Child prompting technique to get more detailed outputs from GPT-4
- My favourite teleprompter app and why AI makes it stand apart from an ocean of terrible alternatives

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April 14, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #8 - The Best Funeral of the Year
- Humans have stolen ideas and work from other humans way before generative AI. Learn when and how, once and for all so you stop this absurd call to boycott AI art.
- What happens to your economy if are not the United States and all the businesses in your country get denied access to AI?
- Do you really care if generative AI can't produce high-fidelity content? Be honest.
- What the new AI-first startups are focused on and what might happen to them in the future
- How much it costs to compete against OpenAI (on the same grounds)
- Who wants to try and manipulate an emerging Artificial General Intelligence to destroy humanity and be paid a fortune to do that?
- Surprise! AI-generated answers can manipulate people's opinion
- You won't have to write a single eulogy for the rest of your life. Happy?

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April 14, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #8 - The Harbinger of Change
- We have a new section dedicated to using GPT-4 to get your job done (with real-world examples!)
- How to write a better product pitch to lure in vain industry analysts
- How to dodge useless meetings without giving away that you are totally lying
- How to write a market report at a microscopic fraction of what analysis firms would charge you
- How to write a blog post for a product announcement better than Google (OK, here the bar is very low)
- How to lay off your employees with the style of a king

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April 7, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #7 - The Human Computer
- Using Google Search is a horrifying experience compared to asking questions to GPT-4. OpenAI will fix it soon.
- AI-related legal cases are on the rise. There never was a better time to become a robo-lawyer.
- Critics of the FLI open letter: "You are being ridiculous. It's just math". So let's hear from somebody that actually knows math.
- Goldman Sachs: "Don't look now, but 300MM jobs need a bit of reskilling."
- Once upon a time, people could be hired to do calculations and their job title was "Computer."
- The demand for AI skills is raising in every industry of the economy. Thankfully, you read Synthetic Work.
- When an AI uses emojis to reply to you, it's not cute. It's manipulative.
- Soon, you'll be able to lie more than usual during dates and job interviews. Happy?

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April 7, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #7 - How Not to Do Product Reviews
- The ten AI-first products I use on daily basis
- How to compare the AI models from A12 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, Eleuther AI, Google, Meta, OpenAI, etc.
- How I use GPT-4 Plus to do things I am crap at (and how it feels like being in an Iron Man movie)
- What's the job-to-be-done of a chatbot/assistant? And where do people feel more natural to find it?
- How I used Perplexity AI to do things I am not crap at, but I don't have time to do
- Do we need bigger AI models or better prompt engineering skills?
- What does it mean for an AI company to compete against OpenAI? And for how long is it sustainable?
- How much money will you be happy to pay for GPT-22?

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March 31, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #6 - Putting Lipstick on a Pig (at a Wedding)
- Ken Griffin can't wait to turn the Finance industry upside down with GPT-4
- Coca-Cola allegedly explores the new frontier of product placement
- Microsoft couldn't wait a second longer to litter with ads your chats with its AI
- There is a connection between the invention of spreadsheet and the transformation of the financial workforce
- Once upon a time, photocopiers were scary
- Is trading the only human interaction that will be algorithmic in future?
- Humans remain equally gullible after 60 years of exposure to AI
- How to start your marriage with a lie in 101 ways

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March 31, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #6 - I Know That This Steak Doesn't Exist
- Generative AI is turning people that don't know how to code into coders, and software engineers into software engineers with 1000x the attitude
- GPT-4 is no longer your copilot, it is now your captain as it builds the app your worked 3 weeks on in just 30 minutes
- Developers are already thinking about new programming languages designed to work with large language models
- It turns out that the AI can be pushed to role-play as an expert, explain its reasoning, and/or self-plan to massively improve the generated output
- It also turns out that the AI can create imaginary worlds that follow rigid rules: like when it pretends to be a Linux terminal
- It also turns out that you can use AI to automatically correct bugs in your mediocre code, creating a "self-healing" program
- Meanwhile, somebody managed to replace the brain of Siri with GPT-3 and the answers you get, finally, don't cause you fits of anger
- The next step, as shown by Meta AI, is an AI that can learn what's the best API to call to achieve the goal indicated in your prompt
- The next-next step is replacing all legacy backends like databases with a large language model.

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March 24, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #5 - You are not going to use 19 years of Gmail conversations to create an AI clone of my personality, are you?
- Somebody has a copy of everything you said in the last few years and could eventually create an AI clone of you
- Non-tech people start to realize that AI can do a better job than their worst employees
- OpenAI researchers take a look at the job market and say "uh-oh"
- In 1980, the US employed 750,000 typists
- Middle managers and executives: your days are numbered
- When you feel like you are falling in love with AI you should really have a cold shower
- Anthropic's Claude AI is in charge of the jokes this week

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March 24, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #5 - The Perpetual Garbage Generator
- How a guy with WordPress and a GPT-4 subscription can generate infinite content
- BuzzFeed has started using AI in January to generate content
- Before them, CNET Money has silently started publishing ChatGPT-generated content (full of inaccuracies that nobody bothered to fact-check)
- An AI makes it easy to paraphrase other AIs to not get caught by other AIs
- The publisher of the UK Daily Mirror wants to play the automated content publishing game, too
- The publisher of Sports Illustrated has been way faster than them
- It really doesn't look bright for mediocre journalists, but they will fight back. Yes. By demanding a subsidy
- And by using AI to make you pay even harder for the AI-generated content that is inspired by your conversations on social media
- LinkedIn launches "collaborative articles" where AI does a tiny bit and you, the user, do the rest (their role in all of this is profiting, in case you are wondering)
- Every publishing platform and channel will be saturated with AI-generated content. It already started
- And it's so severe that organizations like AP, Nature, Elsevier, and The Committee on Publication Ethics, had to create anti-AI policies

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March 17, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #4 - A lot of decapitations would have been avoided if Louis XVI had AI
- People have started automating the production and publishing of YouTube shorts. I call it "The Perpetual Garbage Generator".
- GPT-4 can now memorize all the infamous details of your life and use them against you in future conversations
- If you are a telemarketer, a teacher, or a psychologist, I have a scary, scary chart to show you
- In less than 50 years, we moved from clunky digital cameras to sleek smartphones that use AI to make up photos
- The Romanian government has started using AI to work way less than any other politician on Earth
- People using AI for software development are caught smiling like teenagers in love in front of the screen
- South Park has dedicated an entire episode to ChatGPT and it's glorious

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March 17, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #4 - Medical AI to open new hospital in the metaverse to assist (human) ex doctors affected by severe depression
- Why not use Stable Diffusion to generate the image of a tooth growing in a person’s brain, so young doctors learn how disgusting their profession can be?
- OK. Let's just generate chest X-rays for edge use cases. Somebody has a lovely AI model for you to download
- Somebody else is analyzing the voice of patients to spot signs of anxiety
- Google Med-PaLM 2 consistently performs at an “expert” doctor level on medical exam questions
- DeepMind predicts the 3D structures of the over 200 million known proteins to boost drug discovery
- Microsoft wants to play, too, and fine-tunes BioGPT on 15M PubMed abstracts
- Stability AI launches yet another satellite organization: MedARC
- Meanwhile, in Hungary, AI spots 22 undiagnosed cases of breast cancer
- In the US, another AI is used to identify atrial fibrillation, diabetic retinopathy, and sepsis
- The UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) says "party is over"

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March 10, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #3 - For Dummies: How to steal your coworkers' promotion with AI
- A dishonest photographer shows us how a coworker might steal your promotion
- Office workers buying AI services might finally render obsolete the IT department in big corps
- A science fiction magazine overwhelmed by AI-generated spam submissions shows us that content curation might become an impossible job
- We used to have to convince people to buy typewriters
- There's a new job called synthetic celebrity and, yes, no human does it
- Musicians initially tried to boycott recorded music (they are all dead now, don't worry)
- ChatGPT makes the joke of the week in Woody Allen style

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March 10, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #3 - I will edit and humanize your AI content
- "Prompt Engineer" is now a profession, and it pays more than yours
- "Fact-checker" is now a profession, too, but it pays absolutely nothing. Discuss.
- One-third of business leaders interviewed (in a questionable survey) say that the adoption of ChatGPT will definitely lead to layoffs by end of 2023
- Consensus is that people mastering AI will displace people not mastering AI
- Which leads to students having a crisis about what to study next and if it's worth it
- Even famous developers have their spider senses tingling
- Meanwhile, recruiters have started a despicable thing called automated video interviews
- So, for your next job, you might end up being interviewed by Morgan Freeman (it's not a good thing)

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March 3, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #2 - 61% of the office workers admit to having an affair with the AI inside Excel
- GPT-4 might have enough memory to remember all your shameful secrets and use them against you in future conversations
- Religious leaders are freaking out
- OpenAI is planting the seeds to guarantee the ubiquity of its AI
- Wealthy businessmen used to record their notes with a machine bigger than a horse head
- When your mother was saying that the audiobook narrator is not a real job, she was onto something
- People fall in love with AI easier and faster than in Argentinean telenovelas

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March 3, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #2 - Law firms' morale at an all-time high now that they can use AI to generate evil plans to charge customers more money
- DoNotPay successfully uses AI to automatically negotiate a bill discount with a human customer service rep
- They also try to use ChatGPT in a US Supreme Court case. It turns out it's not safe for your health.
- Top UK law firm starts using Harvey AI to assist 3,500 lawyers with mergers & acquisitions. No big deal.
- Meanwhile, another top UK law firm has started hiring "prompt engineers"
- Robin AI uses AI (duh) to help lawyers generate drafts and review legal contracts
- Academics test large language models to work both as lobbyists and fiduciaries.
- Two courts in Colombia used ChatGPT to reach a verdict. It's ok to have a bad feeling about this
- AI is good at translating. What if it starts translating legalese for the average citizen?

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February 24, 2023 Free Edition

Issue #1 - When I grow up, I want to be a Prompt Engineer and Librarian
- Cathie Wood calls AI the assembly line for knowledge workers
- Synthetic text is a much bigger business opportunity than synthetic images
- The AI landscape is already completely different compared to three months ago
- AutoCAD has saved us a lot of real estate space for lovely cubicles
- You can now make more money than a VP in a medium-sized company with just two years of experience
- Microsoft is showing the world what happens if we let a psychopathic AI interact with humans
- I had an incredible idea for an AI-powered dating app

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February 24, 2023 Splendid Edition

Issue #1 - Burn the books, ban AI. Screwed teachers: Middle Ages are so sexy.
- It took just two months for 3,600 students in the third most prestigious university in the world to start cheating with AI.
- ChatGPT passes top exams designed for humans with (almost) flying colours
- Meanwhile, tuition and college textbooks prices have skyrocketed in the last 22 years
- Of course, schools start banning ChatGPT across the world
- Unfortunately for them, watermarking is useless
- Rather than having a knee-jerk reaction, some teachers incorporate ChatGPT in their classes
- Thankfully, Seth Godin weighs in with his usual wisdom

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