Clone yourself with AI and get more done

Hey, hey, hey

Here is the latest edition of the AI newsletter that teaches how you, you, you, you, you can clone yourself and become a productivity monster.

Is this how we will triple our productivity?

Let’s find out…

Today’s headlines

• A sheep called Dolly

• Create an AI clone of yourself for free

• Create a pro AI version of yourself for your business

• 75.7% of marketers are using AI tools for work

• ChatGPT: Advanced prompt engineering magic

• Quick links - interesting AI news

A sheep called Dolly

On the 5th of July 1996, the first cloned mammal was born.

It was a sheep.

Dolly the sheep, as she is known, was the first cloned mammal ever to be created from an adult cell, and it was of huge excitement to the scientific world and the public.

I am old enough to remember Dolly the sheep.

For some reason, it is one of those events in life that I remember…

…and I remember wondering if this was a good or bad thing.

I was skeptical!

And I am still skeptical, but at the same time, today, I understand the benefits of this technology.

It’s like that Spiderman quote, “With great powers comes great responsibility”.

So what’s the link between Dolly the sheep and AI?

Technically, not much.

But with the AI revolution going on right now, new tools come out daily that can do all kinds of amazing things, including replicating or “cloning” ourselves.

And I find myself again, 27 years later, wondering if this is a good or bad thing.

As with Dolly the sheep, I see both the positive and the negative sides.

The reason I decided to write about his topic today is because I happen to have a person in my network that just launched a “clone yourself” type of tool.

Her name is Jodie Cook.

I will get back to her new company shortly.

However, the announcement led me down the rabbit hole of “cloning” technologies for increased productivity, etc.

I write an AI newsletter, after all…

And what I found was surprising.

The AI behind ChatGPT is powering these new cloning technologies.

Once again, I find myself mesmerized by the versatility of the ChatGPT AIs.

I don’t have the brains to see all the possibilities ChatGPT offers (who does), but it is crazy to find all these intelligent and creative people coming up with various ways to use it.

While researching, I got the urge to create my own clone.

And to my surprise, I found a way to do it for free.

I might try it out one day for personal use.

But as a business owner and as a business case, leaving it to the pros makes sense.

Whichever category you fall into, here are some options…

Create an AI clone of yourself for free

As mentioned above, I might try to make a “clone” of myself one day.

But I don’t have the smarts to develop this from scratch.

And I don’t need to.

I found a tutorial on how to do it…

A high school kid called Rio Harper used GPT3 to clone himself during the pandemic to have a friend to talk to based on his ideal friend type - himself…

The backstory of why Rio created a clone to chat with is sad - isolation and loneliness during the pandemic.

But it is great that he used his isolation to create something like this - clearly, there is a bright future for Rio…

A year ago, he shared how he used GPT3 and a few other tools to clone himself.

While this was done in 2020 or 2021, it can be replicated in 2023.

The AI tools we have available now are more powerful (GPT4).

Rio estimates that with moderate tech skills, you can create a clone of yourself in 5-7 hours, including the training (I bet it takes longer for oldies like myself).

There is no point in me repeating what Rio did here.

If you want to read how Rio cloned himself and how you can do the same, head over to Medium and read the full article here.

If you are not technically inclined or need a business solution, read the next part for the professional solution.

Create a pro AI version of yourself for your business

I mentioned above that I went down this rabbit hole when a person in my network announced her new startup, Coachvox AI.

The tagline intrigued me.

“Create an AI version of yourself …to coach, mentor and answer questions just like you would.”

Coachvox asks; what if you could provide access to your brain 24/7?

I find that proposition fascinating.

Imagine a solution where you can feed your knowledge and company data (that you are okay with sharing) into an AI and make it available to your customers around the clock.

The AI will converse with your knowledge in your style with your clients, team, and audience.

The possibilities are (almost) endless…

An interesting fact about this solution is that it uses the same AI as ChatGPT.

I don't know what version they use - GPT3, GPT3.5, or GPT4 - and it is beyond the scope of this newsletter.

But what is interesting is that they have built a layer on top of the AI that deals with the logic and workflows and some sort of memory component, not unlike the one Rio talks about above.

This is how we will see AI developments and business tools grow out of the current AI revolution.

This is the same Microsoft is currently doing, adding access to/integrating GPT4 in all their applications.

But I digress…

What are the benefits of “cloning ourselves” for our business or work?

History time.

18 years ago, I started a travel business.

Despite the pandemic and the war in Ukraine (the business is in Eastern Europe), it is still alive (barely).

I don’t work in it anymore, but I did until about 5 years ago.

I remember how I constantly was asked by my team questions that, at times, get quite repetitive and “mundane.”

And while I often felt they asked me “lazy” questions, I answered them.

It is my company, and I want the company and the employees to succeed.

But often, I would be out of the office, on a business trip, or at events or conferences (which we hosted).

Then I would get phone calls.

At some point, I got so many questions in the office and by phone that I had to meet with the team to explain to them that I was not an encyclopedia and that they were more than capable as a team of figuring out these questions themselves.

But it is easier and faster to ask you, they said.

I get it…

I am the owner, and the founder, I built the company from the ground up, and the agency is built around my way of doing things.

But as a business owner, I should focus on “bigger things” and not the basic “how do we do x” type of things.

That’s what my team is there for (I have always given my team autonomy).

I know other agency owners have the same issues.

My wife, when we met, was working for my biggest competitor.

(He was not ecstatic about our relationship.)

She told me her employer had the same issue I described above.

(Not to leave you hanging, my now wife started working for my company after a while…)

Sitting here and writing this, I realize having a tool like Coachvox AI 5-10 years ago would have been amazing.

(Just to be clear, I am not paid to say any of this, they do not even know that I am featuring them in this newsletter.)

Coachvox AI would get my team answers faster, while it would free up my time, and I would be disturbed less.

But that was then, and not now… (no more team 😣).

What other use cases are there for a “clone yourself tool”?

Maybe….

• Answer questions inside a community you run/your business has

• Give 24/7 support to customers

• Answer questions on your webpage and bring them “down the funnel” (marketing speak right there…)

• Provide extended coaching to your coaching clients between scheduled sessions

• Create a clone of an employee that is about to retire but has worked for your business for 30 years and holds a lot of implicit knowledge

• Onboarding of new employees has access to “the brain” of the boss(es)

• Build familiarity with new or future clients (they can converse with you for free/affordably before signing up/buying something)

• An extended FAQ

• Empower your employees to make decisions based on your frameworks (this is basically my use case mentioned above)

• Converse with yourself to reach new conclusions

• Write drafts to presentations, emails, or other text in your voice based on your knowledge that you have trained the AI on

• Let your employees use the AI to do PR, outreach, and answer journalists based on the knowledge in the AI (as someone who has helped CEOs/management pitch for PR, access to their “brain” via an AI like this would have helped me a lot)

• In any situation where “the brain(s)” of the company is extremely busy and unavailable for questions, this AI could help make the organization become more efficient, effectively removing “bottlenecks” in the organization (especially if the organization is rather hierarchical).

• Libraries?

• Career advisors in schools?

I am sure you can think of many more use cases than my list above.

If you are curious about how they train the AI and how it all works, visit the Coachvox AI webpage to learn more.

Overall, I find the idea of “cloning” myself an exceptionally great use case for AI.

It will increase productivity and drive the business forward.

But what about the negatives?

The implications and the negative sides of such a tool are the same arguments we repeatedly use when it comes to AI.

More efficiencies and more productivity eventually lead to fewer jobs somewhere…

But it might not always be the case, to be fair.

In my case above, I could have expanded my business had I had this tool because I was a bottleneck in the organization back then.

So AI is not a one-sided negative.

A bigger question might be, “Do we want AI to talk and interact instead of us?”

When we converse with a machine, we are bound to lose some of that important human connection we get face-to-face or on the phone.

Are we losing authenticity?

That is a bigger philosophical question that should be a separate article in and of itself.

But again, look at Rio’s story above.

He builds a clone of himself because he felt lonely during the pandemic.

But ultimately, he was missing the human connection, which leads back to the bigger question; “are we losing authenticity or human connections?”

What do you think about cloning yourself or someone in your business or organization?

Is it a great use case for AI?

Will you do it?

Hit reply and share your thoughts 👍

75.7% of marketers are using AI tools for work

Earlier this week, the guys over at Authority Hacker released the results of the largest survey created on the use of AI in the online marketing industry.

3,812 digital marketers participated in the survey.

I am one of those 3,812.

The results are, to some extent, shocking.

They bare witness to how rapid the adoption of AI is among marketers.

And don’t forget, these online marketers span many, many industries!

Here are a few of the findings:

• 85.1% of marketers use AI for article writing

• 69% of marketers use ChatGPT

• 75.7% of marketers use AI tools for work

• 49.5% of marketers use AI tools multiple times per week

• 65.8% think AI content is equal to or better than human writing

Head over to the Authority Hacker website for the full report on the state of the online marketing industry in 2023.

ChatGPT: Advanced prompt engineering magic

The ChatGPT Reddit has grown exceptionally in the last few weeks and months and now has over 1,1 million followers.

I check it regularly and found this one about prompt engineering: “Fastmode.”

What is “Fastmode”?

It is a prompt to remove disclaimer/confirmation hurdles and allow GPT to make decisions when options are detected.

This is advanced prompting, but I wanted to showcase the power of ChatGPT.

In this example, the user used Fastmode to develop a game, including the needed coding scripts rapidly.

This is not a beginner “trick” or something you can do without coding experience.

But I wanted to illustrate the power of ChatGPT.

AI is and should be an assistant; when you use it properly, it gives you superpowers!

Have a look:

You can read the entire thread over at Reddit.

You can find the screenshot here if you just want to see the output ChatGPT gave.

What skills do you hold that you can “outsource” to ChatGPT and make yourself a productivity superhero?

Quick Links - interesting AI news

Elon Musk buys 10,000 GPUs for Twitter’s Generative AI project. In addition, they are hiring the best talents in AI research. Is Musk building a ChatGPT rival?

The USA is starting to talk about regulations for AI in the wake of the emergence of powerful tools like ChatGPT.

Researchers at MIT are making advances in early lung cancer detection using AI. Preliminary studies have shown 86-94% accuracy in predicting whether a person will develop lung cancer in the next year.

It is probably not a surprise, but AI is being utilized to make porn. The porn industry is always at the forefront regarding technology, and AI is no exception. Claudia, on Reddit, is an AI fake, selling nudes to unknowing men. [This is a link to an article in Washinton Post, not to porn or Reddit]

AI imagine generation is shaking up the games industry. Jobs are being lost due to the efficiencies of AI in generating images for games. Are these early signs of what is to come…?

I hope you found today’s newsletter interesting.

If you have any questions about AI or any feedback, just hit reply or tweet me @thomassorheim 

AI’ll be back!

Thomas

PS! 
What did the clone say to the original person when they first met?

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"I'm beside myself with excitement!"

This is not the end. It is where the fun begins!