🍎 Apple Sauce

Time for the ‘sauce’ on an AI app we’ve been trying out, that may be useful to you!

Today’s apple: Audiopen.ai

Context: I have a thousand thoughts across a dozen different categories in my brain at all times. I’d like to capture them, or journal, but my circumstances typically prevent this (driving, working on something, holding kid(s), cleaning kid(s) mess, cleaning messy kid(s), cooking, doing life).

About the app: I wished for an app where I could verbally dump my thoughts, and have them neatly transcribed for me. While monitoring the market for AI tools, I discovered AudioPen.ai, a simple yet stunning tool that does just that. You ramble your thoughts into the app. The app will transcribe your voice recording, clean it up and rewrite based on your preferences (length, tone, style), and output shareable text.

Value: In the last 3 months, I've used AudioPen.ai to write content, emails, and text messages. It's a perfect app for those who like to think out loud or don't want to start from scratch when writing anything. Note: I’ve found it’s not the best tool for verbally noting down immediate to-dos or lists.

October 6, 2023 edit: there is a ‘List’ writing style that is very effective!

Especially for busy parents, this app is a 2-for-1: we can be much more productive while simultaneously reducing our mental load.

Pricing: The app is free to use, and if you like it and want the premium features like the ability to select style and length preferences, or organize transcripts into folders, you can get an early adopter lifetime subscription to AudioPen.ai for $150 until September 26. And going with the 2-for-1 theme, if you use this link to purchase an Audiopen subscription, you’ll be supporting ammi.ai as well!

Data & Privacy: On the data and privacy front, I appreciate the app’s easy-to-read and understand Privacy Policy. The gist is - Audiopen collects minimal personal information, including a valid email, when creating an account. This information is used solely to provide subscribed services. Audio transcription and processing are done by Deepgram and Open AI models. Your data will not be used to train these models. Voice recordings will be deleted after 24 hours. Transcripts are not visible to any other users.

And yes, I did use Audiopen to draft parts of this newsletter 🙂

🌱Planting the Seed

Embark on your AI journey by learning about the fundamental concepts and terminology. Let’s demystify AI topics and headlines in language your kid could understand!

There is SO much to get into. But let’s take it step by step. Let’s start with the fundamental question: what is AI, and why is this ChatGPT-type of AI making such huge waves?

What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

AI is technology that enables machines or computers to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence such as processing natural language or distinguishing between a sloth and pain au chocolat. More on the definition of AI here.

How is this done? By some combination of mathematical model(s) + data to train the model(s) + computer(s) to power it all. The theory behind AI dates back to the 1950s, and folks have been building AI systems with varying success for several decades. But for increasingly powerful AI, you need increasingly huge amounts of data and increasingly powerful computers. We are living in a time where all the ingredients needed to build really powerful AI - like GPT-3.5, the AI model behind ChatGPT - exist. More on the history of AI here.

Why is this ChatGPT variant of AI causing such a ruckus?

AI has been very present in our daily lives for several years: AI powers virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, Netflix and Amazon recommendations, and self-driving cars. Why is the hype around ChatGPT and Generative AI different and so loud?

In contrast to ‘classical’ AI, as some call it, which can do things like predict (this user is likely to cancel their subscription) or classify (this is an image of a turtle), Generative AI can…generate. Generate images, text, and audio. Generate ideas and content. It has immediate & vast applications in amplifying human productivity and creativity. Plus, it’s relatively accessible technology - you can interact with many of these models in plain English. Per Silicon Valley’s favorite tweet (xweex?) of the year:

So if you have an internet connection and can speak English, congrats! You are now an AI wizard. More on generative AI here.

While there are certainly many beneficial uses of AI, unfortunately, there are very harmful applications of generative AI technology as well.
But I think we’ve covered enough ground for today.
We’ll get into it next time 🙂

🍇Fruitful Harvest

We’ll pluck some of the best AI Prompts, AI-generated images, and overall good stuff from the ammi.ai community and share them here.

At this point in my life, it seems as if I will be attending a kid’s birthday party every weekend till the end of time. I can empathize with the immense undertaking of planning and executing a kid’s party. I would like to offer fellow Ammis respite in the form of this kid’s birthday party planning ChatGPT prompt. I’m no prompt-writing guru, but this will hopefully provide a nice boost to get you started:

You are an event planner. You are planning a <insert event here>. The theme is <insert theme>. The venue is <insert venue>. <Insert meal of day> will be served. The party is for kids ages <insert age range>. Today’s date is <insert today’s month and date> and the date of the party is <insert month and date of party>.  Create a weekly to-do list to plan and execute the party. For each to-do, provide up to 3 recommendations.

Note: ChatGPT is a web application to interact with an AI model trained on vast amounts of data from the internet up until 2021. You can sign up for a free account here. ChatGPT improves by training on user conversations. You can opt out of having your conversations used for training by going to Settings>Data Controls>Chat History and Training and toggle the setting to disabled.

👩‍🌾Cultivating Conversation

Your thoughts are invaluable — whatever they may be! Feedback on anything above? Gen AI prompts or AI Artwork to share? Questions that you’d love to explore with the ammi.ai community? Reply to this email.

Here are some questions from ammi.ai to you:

AMMI Q: What is your go-to recipe to get your kids to eat a healthy dose of vegetables? Let us know by replying to this email.

AI Q: What questions or concepts would you like to explore in the ‘Planting the Seed’ section? Let us know by replying to this email.