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Hi Friends 👋

Happy Tuesday! Once again ChatGPT is changing. It’s hard to keep up. I’m here to help you try.

In this week’s email:

• Why smart business owners are prioritising automation & prompt engineering as their next key hire

• AI to decode brain waves

• Learn how to build your LLM own model for free

• ChatGPT - big update incoming

• Business intelligence just got more intelligent with Amazon

• And more…

Let’s get started…

AI for Marketing 🔗

🗞️ AI News

You’re Invited. Entry Point AI is hosting a free Fine-tuning Masterclass. In 30 minutes per day for 4 days, you will fine-tune your first working models with hands-on examples. This class is completely free and open to AI practitioners and enthusiasts of all levels. They will use 100% no-code tools and no developer experience is required. Join the masterclass*

AI is changing online marketplaces, making them more efficient and personalised. Businesses that adapt to this change will have a competitive advantage. [Link]

Brain decoding technology is changing lives with AI. Some really smart people are doing pretty great stuff with brain decoding at the University of California, San Francisco. This video shows a head being plugged into a computer, which you may find amazing and visually shocking. [Link]

Business intelligence (BI) meets Generative AI (LLMs like ChatGPT). With Amazon Quicksight, anyone can now analyse large business datasets in English to find hidden data trends treasure [Link]


💬 ChatGPT

Another big ChatGPT Plus update is imminent. There are two changes. Firstly you can directly chat about PDFs, plus, chatting with data files and other document types. Secondly, you’ll no longer need to choose a model. ChatGPT will automatically decide whether to start a Bing web browser, run Python code in Data Analysis, or use DALL-E to generate images based on the requirements of the conversation's description. [Link]

*Partnership Content

Deep Dive

Why Smart Business Owners Are Prioritizing Automation & Prompt Engineering as Their Next Key Hire

The silent scaling that will set the SME winners apart

Why you should care: Using ChatGPT, you can automate so many tasks currently completed by knowledge workers. This means less cost, fewer staff and fewer mistakes.

What you need to know: “Prompt Engineering” and the automation of tasks are now within reach of every business. The businesses that embrace this change are going to win because they will have a lower cost base and be able to attract talent by paying more than the competition.


On with the story…

Twenty-five years ago, I was rafting down the Kaligandaki River in Nepal, a beautiful river which flows in one of the deepest gorges in the world.

High above the cliffs, something catches my eye.

There's an army of people—hundreds, maybe even a thousand—breaking rocks and cutting a road into the mountain with nothing but hand tools.

I couldn't work out why weren’t they using machinery or dynamite.

Back-breaking, dangerous and manual work is a wasted opportunity for these people.

Perhaps one could've been a Steve Jobs or a Nikola Tesla if given half a chance.

Fast forward to today…

…and you don't have to travel to Nepal to find a similar situation.

Think about your own office.

The sheer number of mind-numbing tasks we still do manually—like transferring data between emails—is staggering.

It's 2023, and we've got AI that can do this type of knowledge work in seconds.

So why not put human brainpower to good use, and use AI to complete the mundane..?

Imagine if, instead of boring admin, your team was diving into big ideas, conjuring up killer marketing plans, and thinking up ways to revolutionise customer service.

My point here is simple: tech and education can be game-changers, unlocking human creativity like never before.

No more confined to manual toil; the sky's the limit when we put our minds to work.

That lesson has stuck with me since my Nepal days, and it's one if you run your own business that you should take to heart, too.

Here’s how…

The Democratization of Automation: You Don't Need to Be a Programmer

Until very recently, automating business processes required programming skills. Sure, you could use Zapier to merge together systems, share data and run automations.

By automation, I mean processes like replying to emails with delivery dates, answering support questions, and following up on business leads.

But to run anything that could make a decision, a logical “if this, do that”, still required programmers.

Then GPT4 changed everything for three reasons:

1. You can write “if” statements within ChatGPT in plain old English
2. You can write code even if you’re not a programmer
3. Simple AI applications can be built in minutes vs months using LLMs like ChatGPT

So, what does this mean?

Let’s take an example…

You want to sort your main company inbox and automatically forward emails to the right person, saving on an administration person.

The hardest part of this process is building the categorisation step. Eg the step that works out who each email should go to.

Now, just one ChatGPT prompt like this will do it:

Until LLM’s like ChatGPT were born, making a system like this would have been costly.

Either a supervised learning process would have taken months to make. Or a programming tool would have taken weeks to build and often give the wrong output.

But now anyone can write prompts, and you iterate the prompt until it works every time.

No need for programmers or an AI learning process.

That process is called “Prompt Engineering”, an overly stated name for telling ChatGPT or other LLMs what to do.

Whether it takes 10 minutes or 10 hours, it's a process anyone with a creative and logical mind and patience can master.

So now, you don’t need a programmer to automate your business processes.

You need someone that is smart, quick to learn, hard-working and logical to automate with no code tools, like Zapier and an LLM AI like ChatGPT.

Want to know how to implement the email sorter? Here is our previous deep dive guide on setting up automation to get you started👇

Mind-Blowing Simplicity

Most SMEs don't even know this is possible.

Meanwhile, young 3-person start-ups are turning over tens of millions with AI-powered automation doing the job of 10’s of people.

To start, just look at your own business processes, which:

1. Suck up your team’s time with no brainpower required

2. Text-based work

These tasks can now be automated.

Now you can choose between adding another team member who brings in more money. Or a team member who uses AI to automate tasks and help your business grow without needing to expand your back office.

Which do you choose and why?

I’d choose both, as you’ll grow even quicker.

But the question is this - will your business benefit?

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Thanks for reading,

Tim

Tim O'Shea
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