⚡ What Are AI Agents and Why Does It Matter?

⚡ What Are AI Agents and Why Does It Matter?

Reading time: 3 minutes

Happy Thursday:) What a week in developments! I've updated the format, let me know what you think and let's delve in.

Five trending topics for the week:

1. Tool: MacGPT ⭐⭐⭐⭐

2. How to use ChatGPT 💬

3. Game designers losing jobs to AI 🎮

4. What are AI agents and why does it matter? 🕵️‍♂️

5. Midjourney is getting better and better 🖼

1. MacGPT

• MacGPT is ChatGPT perfectly integrated in every text box and every program.

• In the gif above, I’m using it in my email app to generate three bullet points explaining what AGIs are, and then asking to translate them into French. Magnifique.

• Cost: Integration requires an API key, which means $20 for ChatGPT’s premium tiers. MacGPT’s other functionalities, such as access from menu bar, are free.

• Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

• Sorry PC people, Mac only. Merlin for your Chrome browser is not as integrated, but still good.

2. How To Think About ChatGPT

• Making a list about what ChatGPT can do is like making a list for what you can do on the internet. The answer is both simple and complex beyond comprehension. Everything. You can literally do everything.

• Think of ChatGPT as the world’s worst communicator. ChatGPT is like a savant toddler that knows everything but won’t tell you unless you ask. The solution is to be very specific about what you need.

• These templates might help:

For proofreading:

Act as: Editor, PR manager, social media manager, journalist
Degree of revision: Substantial revision, minor revision
Type of edit: Fact check, formatting, proofreading, copyediting, improve clarity
Change style to: Professional, academic, clickbait, analytical
Change tone to: Analytical, conversational, persuasive, emotional, authoritative
Change reader comprehension level to: Advanced, assume extensive prior knowledge
Change length to: 1000 words, 500 words

For follow-up emails:

[Paste your meeting notes]. Write a follow-up email based on the meeting notes. The follow-up should include a summary, an outline of action items (format in who should do what by when), and agenda items for next week’s meeting.

• Be specific. More templates here. Good for inspiration, getting a lay of the land.

3. Autonomous AI Agents

• In the last week, the first AI agents like BabyAGI and AutoGPT were developed, and blew up.

• An AI agent is a program or system that can make decisions and operate autonomously (without human operators) to achieve a goal. Basically, it’s a program that can think, make decisions and achieve goals.

• What’s different compared to ChatGPT? ChatGPT can answer questions, but it cannot ask itself questions. An autonomous agent can self-prompt its own questions, and then answer them. It’s like ChatGPT with access to the internet and the ability to move and execute actions throughout the internet.

• You can try it yourself with AgentGPT (free!). BabyAGI & AutoGPT both require some programming knowledge.

• AgentGPT works in your browser. It lets you create a goal, and it will “attempt to reach the goal by thinking of tasks to do, executing them, and learning from the results”.

• I asked it to write this newsletter and watched it break that goal down into tasks and execute. You can see the output here (google doc).

• Will this replace you? No. It’s still experimental. The best-case scenario is that we’ll get a good PowerPoint application by the end of the year. It didn’t work for the newsletter. But changes are afoot. And speaking of changes…

4. AI Is Already Taking Video Game Illustrators’ Jobs in China (Viola Zhou, Rest of World)

• Video games require a lot of graphics. Turns out video game graphics are easily generated with AI. So the humans are losing their jobs.  
  
  “AI-generated art was so skilled that some illustrators talked about giving up drawing altogether. Our way of making a living is suddenly destroyed.”

• Another point of interest is that video game designers with niche aesthetics survive, since the AI hasn’t trained on those enough. Unlike more popular styles.

• It begs the question - what is safe? How should we upskill? What traits will become more important? My bet is on everything that is human-facing. Soft skills, sales. What else? DM.

• Transformations. Soon, every business will take pride in being AI-powered. Then, using AI will look “cheap,” and businesses will hide it. Ultimately, human interfaces will be a premium touchpoint.

• This is not far off and already underway in customer service, where getting a real person on the line is usually part of some premium plan.

• The article is fascinating throughout and I recommend reading the whole thing.

5. A Pixar movie about a demon boy who lives in Hell.

Of course, not real. Sigh.

Stay hydrated, eat vegetables. I wish you nice human things like sunny skies and solid sleep.

Cheers,
Tanya

PS if you were confused about some of the terms above, you can check out an illustrated cheat sheet here.

📧 You’re still here? If you stayed to the end you're probably cool and I'd like to connect. Give me a book recommendation or just say hi on Twitter or LinkedIn.