185: What matters more: Skills or Taste?
The case against waiting + Gemini Advanced can build apps for you now
The cosmos is paying attention.
Earlier this week I was fortunate to be given a platform to address 3M’s global marketing team and speak about AI. In these situations I probably lead with too much historic context, but that’s also kind of my jam. The weirdness we’re experiencing now with AI is no different than our ancestors confronting a world where the printing press created demonstrable value being able to read and write. Rinse and repeat with mass media then social.
The challenge this time is, of course, speed. You could take your time learning to read way back in the 1500s. Or wait a decade to develop a website, or wait a few years for social media to shake out. The escalation of AI suggests waiting to embrace its advantage is not good strategy.
The very next day I found myself waiting.
The backstory: I was invited to join one of several working groups in a large initiative. Oh joy, oh rapture! And it’s been a few months, through which I’ve been paying mild attention. Until I was asked to lead this working group. And summarize our progress in two slides. Due tomorrow. 😬
And I found myself late at night pouring through old emails, reviewing Teams transcripts, trying to make sense of our group’s work. Like a merchant ignoring the advantages of reading and writing a century after the printing press had made those skills routine.
Duh.
Why am I wasting precious time trying to organize, distill, and summarize complex information when I have a tool which can do it for me?
“I need help making sense of a mix of information received from a colleague. Big picture: Recently I was made the leader of a working group, one of many, inside my company - I’m new and haven’t been very involved. And now I’ve been asked to summarize our WG's efforts from the past few months in two powerpoint slides! Feels daunting since I’m new and don’t know anything. So, the “mix of information” below is from the previous WG leader. They distilled the WG’s efforts to date. I want you to review this information, ask me questions as needed, and help frame up a succinct narrative of the WG’s efforts...which I can apply to the two powerpoint slides. Here’s the mix of information… [pasted into the prompt]”
Six seconds later, I had headers, bullet points, and speaker notes.
And they made sense.
Now I could add value editing, curating and designing for impact.
The skill worth honing today is twofold: Giving yourself permission to employ AI across the entire range of your work; and second, to let go of any sense of perfectionism when prompting. Mine above is ugly, repetitive and emotional. And it does not matter. Not to an AI.
What the AI did not have is taste—in the broadest sense. It is not aware of politics, bureaucracy, and human behavior, i.e. How might others react to the two slides I was assembling? That’s where the human adds real value. Not in the word salad machinery trying to make sense from fragments of conversation across a handful of emails and transcripts.
By the way, ChatGPT did offer to design my two slides for me. They were awful. But you know it can and will learn, and that step will be routine, soon enough.
What are you waiting for?
AI+Creativity Update
🔮 Predictions are coming true. A year ago the team at Google outlined how AI could take a drawing and intuit and build a website or application. Today, it’s a reality inside Gemini Advanced (which does cost $20/month, but there are deals you can leverage for lower cost). My friend
demonstrated this the other day using the Gemini Advanced 2.5 Pro model.Honestly, the hardest part for me was thinking up an app idea. Thank goodness for ChatGPT. After a few rounds of conversation we landed on GaugeFace. I submitted what you see below to Gemini Advanced.
It thought for a few minutes, did some code development (which I don’t understand, or actually need to understand), and arrived at the initial result.
Here’s a demo of GaugeFace you can play with.
Here’s the thing: I am not coder. So if I wanted to convey an idea to you for an app, I’d be constrained. Except now, maybe not. Our ability to assemble interactive ideas quickly is here. Where you and I add value is in the refinement of the raw ideation we previously couldn’t even contemplate.
What will you do as a result?