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🍎 Apple Sauce

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

Thanks to our guest contributor, Fatema I. from Fremont, California, for today’s Apple Sauce.

Today’s apple: LLama Life Co

Introduction: My morning ritual involves putting pen to paper, and jotting down tasks in a notepad. Organizing my life involves an array of lists, from groceries to travel preparations. I’m always open to tools and tech to help me with my lists and to-dos. When I came across Llama Life Co, a to-do list app with AI features, I was interested in testing it out. Here's my take after 10 days of use.

Features I Loved:

1. Break It Down Feature: 

This unique feature is essentially like having an assistant with you. When I entered a task like "unpack suitcase from Canada," the app uses AI to further detail the task with actions such as "unpack clothes," "unpack toiletries," and "sort out laundry." This specificity was immensely beneficial for general tasks like shopping or laundry.

2. Color Me Feature: 

This was a delightful addition. Assigning colors to tasks made my to-do list vibrant and less intimidating, infusing a playful touch to mundane tasks.

Areas for Improvement:

1. Lack of a Standalone App: 

Llama Life Co operates as a widget added to your home screen rather than a traditional app. In my experience, an app feels more intuitive and user-friendly. The company announced they will launch an app later this year.

2. Emphasis on Time-boxing: 

The app is really centered around the concept of timeboxing, where you allocate a specific amount of time to work on a given task. This technique is commonly used to manage projects and tasks effectively and to prevent excessive time spent on any one activity. While the idea of a productivity app focused on timeboxing is useful, it isn't universally practical. I found myself not using the timer for many of my to-dos, like grocery shopping or cooking meals.

Ideal Users, Pricing, & Privacy: 

This app could be useful for the following types of users:

• Students prepping for exams, benefiting from timed study sessions.

• Fitness enthusiasts or anyone looking for a timer to structure their workouts.

• Anyone who struggles to focus, or gets distracted easily, while attempting to get through discrete tasks.

• Facilitators who run events or meetings, to ensure everything stays on track.

Pricing & Privacy: The app has a 7-day free trial, after which users must subscribe for $6/month, $39/year, or $99/lifetime. Llama Life collects a user’s name, email address, and app usage information, but will not sell this data to 3rd parties. The app uses the GPT 3.5 AI model to power its AI features.

🌱 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!

Think back to the first innovative or cool technology you remember using in your lifetime. Perhaps it was the television, Personal Computers (PCs), the Internet, or social media. My first memory of ‘cool’ tech was my Abbu’s, or father’s, PalmPilot. A PalmPilot was a productivity & organization device that was kind of like a smartphone minus the smart…and the phone. It had a touch screen, though, so to me, it was magical.

For kids born in the last few years, ChatGPT will be their PalmPilot. This begs the question, what forms will AI take, and what functions will AI play in the coming generations?

Personal AI: Science Fiction to Reality

One potential AI innovation is personal AI, or AI that aims to understand an individual and provide personalized support as a good friend, assistant, or coach. Thus far, we’ve primarily seen personal AI in Hollywood films, like Samantha in Her, or J.A.R.V.I.S. in Iron Man. Well, personal AI has transitioned from the realm of science fiction to reality.

There is a company called Inflection.ai that has already built a personal AI called Pi. Though Inflection.ai is relatively new, founded in 2022, the company has already raised over a billion dollars from folks like Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google. Inflection also has the most renowned AI and tech innovators among their leadership, and uniquely powerful resources to build AI. All of this to say, Inflection.ai and technologies like Pi could very well become everyday technologies in the near future, and eventually become household names like Amazon and Netflix.

Slice of Pi

Looking at the Pi home page, it has a simple chatbot layout similar to ChatGPT, but much more warm and welcoming. A major difference is the array of simple visual suggestions of how to interact with Pi, like simply venting your feelings or discussing career plans.

While it’s definitely inviting, Pi makes me nervous as an Ammi. I am not very comfortable sharing personal information, feelings, or aspirations with AI, and I am definitely not comfortable with the prospect of my children doing so. But 30 years ago, I doubt parents would have been thrilled at the prospect of their kids being able to easily access and watch videos posted on the internet by strangers. Yet here we are, scrolling through videos of people cutting through objects, wondering if they’re real or cake.

No matter how uncomfortable we may be with emerging AI technologies, we have to accept that some may become everyday technologies, as essential as smartphones are today. The good news is these technologies are still in the early stages, being built and iterated on. We just have to stay in the loop!

This Ammi has her eye on Pi. But for emotional support, I'll stick to crocheting mushrooms.

🍇 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.

Last week’s poll:

Please rate the state of your digital workspace (email inbox, file organization, bookmarks, browser tabs)?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 2

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 3

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 4

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 5

Being human

Back in February, the world was getting acquainted with ChatGPT and other similar AI chat applications. I came across an article where a journalist shares their simultaneously amusing and concerning conversation with Microsoft’s Bing AI chat. Here is a passage I bookmarked at the time, and would like to share with you:

We 💚 Your Feedback:

👩‍🌾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 is a question from ammi.ai to you:

🪴 Propagation Poll

💐If you liked this, pollinate!

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