PatrickIt seems like every other day I now see a new post about people building news apps and selling their AI startups for millions of dollars. And I bet you would like to jump on that band wagon too! Who wouldn’t?
The question is, do you know how to not only get started, but to build the AI system that gets you to the finish line? And the key is one very important concept, the details.
This new AI revolution is very real, and we are at the beginning of a world changing shift in how tasks and work is done in the world.
However, this revolution is going to reward the people that do the work and learn how to build clarity on each step of the process from idea to finished product by leveraging AI.
The dollars are in the details. That’s where the real money is going to be made.
If you just want to have AI do all the work for you, you are still in the consumer mindset.
But if you can shift your mindset to being the creator and director, understanding the details of the systems you want to build, and leveraging AI to do the heavy lifting, you will be rewarded.
AI Has Shortened the Time/Effort from Idea → MVP
I started using ChatGPT about 2 years ago, and I’ve noticed a dramatic shift in the world since it first came out to the public. Never before in our lifetime has someone been able to so quickly take an idea that they have for an app, a business or a product and turn it into something that is valuable for other people so quickly. It’s incredible what I have seen happening and been able to do myself.
It allows us to skip complicated steps that would have normally often required an entire team to bring an idea to life, especially if you are not technical.
For instance, in the past if you had an idea for an app as a non-technical founder; you would have to go hire a designer to create a mock-up, then you would have to take that mock up to a dev shop to turn it into what is called a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
This MVP would be the foundation for you just to really get started getting customers, validating the idea and either creating revenue or going after investor funding.
ChatGPT and other AI systems have now become my creative and strategic assistant in this process. If you have ever seen the movie Ironman, Tony Stark has an AI system called Jarvis. He talks to Jarvis just like a human, coming up with ideas, telling Jarvis build things, and communicating with “him” like the AI is Tony’s teammate.
And that’s what is now possible for you too, if you learn how to use AI not just to ask questions or do the work for you but to become your teammate, you are going to thrive in the new digital age.
And now, when you want to accomplish something in today’s world, you can (almost) skip the first two steps. You can go straight from “idea → prompt → MVP” in a matter of minutes; not weeks, months or even years get an idea off the ground.
But there is a catch.
The AI to Human Gap
The thing is, there’s currently a huge gap. This gap is from what is possible today with AI versus what people are actually doing with it daily.
AI is already more powerful than we can imagine, it has access to a large percentage the world’s knowledge and can help you take un-organized thoughts and concepts and turn it into something extremely valuable for yourself or other people.
However, the gap is in the details. And the details matter.
Do you know every step that the AI has to do to accomplish the task you set out for it? Do you know what the input information looks like, what the output should be, and how to direct it to transform the data into something useful?
The More Specific You Can Be, The Better
The details are what we want to start to get clear about. Because the more clear you can be on the details and telling the AI what to do, the better results you are going to get.
Through my own experience and also talking to a lot of other AI enthusiasts, I’ve decided the best way to work with AI is to be very VERY specific.
You want to be clear on:
- What data do I currently have?
- What data or output do I want?
- What are some examples of what I’m looking for as the output?
- What context can I give it so it understands more about where I’m coming from, including:
- Who I am and what my goals are?
- What I am trying to achieve?
- What I already know about my desired outcome and what I’m unaware of?
- What are the constraints I have?
- What is the vocabulary that I must share with the AI so it knows what I am looking to accomplish?
- What do I currently not know that I need to learn?
- What is the format of the output data that I am expecting?
If you can get really clear on all these things when you work with AI and learn to treat it as your thought parter, you are going to thrive in this new age.
And finally, you also want to think of working with AI like you are training a teenager that is just getting their feet wet in the world. You want to tell it step-by-step what to do, what to look out for, and what to avoid so that it has the context to navigate within these parameters.
Also don’t forget the feedback loop between human and AI. The most successful implementations aren't fire-and-forget solutions but iterative processes where human feedback refines the AI outputs and in turn improves future interactions. This collaborative approach will maximize the value of both your human creativity and AI processing power that is available.
The future really does belongs to the directors, not the doers. If you know how to direct the AI to do the work it used to take entire teams to do, and it can do it in a fraction of the time it used to; in my opinion that starts to make you super human.
Just don’t forget the details, because that’s where the magic, and the dollars, are.
The world we are moving into is beginning to create enormous wealth for those that take the time to not just learn AI, but to implement and master it.