For the past decade, a growing interest has occurred in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to transform a wide range of industries. This interest has been renewed and intensified with the recent launch of ChatGPT, a natural language model optimized for communicating with the written word.
Just months after its launch, ChatGPT is quickly becoming the fastest growing user base in history, attracting over 100 million users. Its growth is a testament to the platform’s ability to surprise and delight users with an unparalleled experience in reading, writing, and communicating.
It’s also a sign of both the increasing relevance of AI in our daily lives and its potential to revolutionize the way we interact with technology—as well as highlighting how much the average person dislikes reading and writing.
A Reading and Writing Calculator
Realtors were quick to adopt this new “magic” into their daily work routine, recognizing its potential to streamline tasks such as writing listing descriptions and follow-up emails in significantly less time. This led to a surge of articles praising its benefits, with headlines like “Real estate agents say they can’t imagine working without ChatGPT now” from CNN.
However, there were also legitimate questions raised about the platform devaluing the perceived role of Realtors with their clients, and a few even accused them of being “shameless” for using AI to generate property listings.
I’ve noticed that the negative emotions around the use of AI often come with a fear of replacement, but after months of testing I can confirm you don’t need to worry about that—yet.
In its current stage, ChatGPT is an incredible reading and writing calculator, a tool that can help someone accelerate at getting the job done. As someone who struggled with math in school, the idea of not using my calculator in Algebra II is terrifying. However, using the calculator also didn’t guarantee me an A on the test (it didn’t even guarantee me a C at times). A less-than-ideal input can result in the wrong answer for a question in math, and, similarly, AI tools for communication rely on proper input and editing to get to a final product worth using professionally.
The idea of machines taking over the world can be daunting—I get it. However, if you spend your time worrying about that instead of experimenting with AI, then you will be replaced by the experts around you who embrace its use. If you’ve previously seen AI as a threat, hopefully this article will help transform your thinking into viewing it as a helpful companion that augments your efficiency and effectiveness—just like what your iPhone did for you in 2007.
The Problem of Too Much Content
Now that generating more content is becoming easier with the help of technology, does that mean you should just make more of it? Not always. Generating content for each home you build makes sense as each one is unique and should provide value to the home shopper. This is an example of how technology should be applied to scale content well. Let’s look at an example of where quantity is not the best answer.
Pretend you want to rank highly on Google for the term “new homes in Dublin, Ohio.” As your manager, I assign you the task of creating content that will help our builder reach the top ranking position by writing 10 helpful blogs about what it is like to live in Dublin, work in Dublin, options for building a new home in Dublin, etc. With the help of AI, this task can now be accomplished in less than 12 minutes. The problem will be that while your quantity of output is high, the value of each blog to the consumer shopping for a new home in Dublin will be low because the posts will be watered down and overly general.
Creating more noise—what some call “digital pollution”—is by definition unhelpful. In this scenario, you would be better off spending time working on one in-depth piece of content that is helpful and applicable to what you know someone considering moving to Dublin actually needs to know. You’ll still accomplish this much faster using technology, but the race is not to make the haystack bigger. Instead, look for ways to make your needle larger. Improve the quality of your content to stand apart from the competition, and always help your customers find answers or inspiration to solve their problems if you want to be successful.
Ready to Augment Yourself?
I’ve spent the majority of this article discussing ChatGPT specifically and the written word more broadly, but there are numerous applications for machine learning, so I want to highlight some others as I close. If you’re ready to augment your skills without fear of being replaced, I highly recommend you spend time in the coming weeks experimenting with one or more of the following:
Beatoven: Create unique royalty-free music to elevate your videos.
Cleanup: Remove any unwanted object (dumpsters) or defect (blue tape) from your pictures in seconds.
Vidyo: Make Reels or YouTube Shorts from long-form content with a few clicks.
Cleanvoice: Automatically edit your podcast episodes. You do have a podcast that speaks to your local expertise in home building, right?
Tome: Create impactful presentation decks for your next zoning meeting or sales meeting.
Illustroke: Create stunning vector images from text prompts for use in blogs and marketing material.
Krisp: Make that sales call with confidence, even with your crying toddler nearby. Krisp removes background voices, noises, and echoes.
Midjourney: Create images of any style and complexity in seconds from text prompts.
Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” AI isn’t magic on its own, but, paired with a skilled expert in a particular field, the outcome will likely be defined as magic by the audience.
Don’t let fear of the unknown prevent you from doing your best work, with a little help from AI.
