Unleash Your Business Potential with our workshop - 'The AI Advantage: Redefining Productivity'

Is your business ready to tap into the game-changing power of AI?

I'm thrilled to introduce a new workshop that's already propelling businesses towards greater efficiency.

The AI Advantage: Redefining Productivity, a Diagonal Thinking workshop, uncovers the real power of AI beneath the buzz. It's not just about the hype – it's about fundamentally transforming your operational efficiency.

Here's a glimpse of what one of our recent workshop attendees experienced:

“We achieved stupendous results with the first project after the workshop, reducing a day-long activity to around 2 minutes. There were tears!”

This three-hour workshop, fully customised to your business needs, will empower you to:

• Decipher AI: Gain a clear understanding of AI and its practical implications for your business.

• Master AI: Learn how to train AI systems and create effective prompts for optimal results.

• Strategise AI Integration: Discover how AI can streamline your operations, starting the day after the workshop.

We don’t just look at AI from a tech perspective; we help you integrate AI into your operational reality.

Having worked with organisations of all sizes across the creative and media sector, including TV production companies, games studios, creative agencies, alongside arts and cultural organisations, and educators, I bring a wealth of understanding about your unique challenges. This allows me to offer practical, immediately applicable solutions.

Ready to take the first step towards harnessing the power of AI for your business? Let's discuss how this workshop can bring a transformative change to your operations.

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Hacking education productivity with AI

As ever, using AI to increase productivity in all walks of life is at the forefront of my thinking. Here’s another real-world example of how tools like ChatGPT can supercharge your working day…

An Unexpected Outburst: Navigating Tech Hurdles in Education

Yesterday, my lovely wife, a hugely experienced English teacher at a secondary school, swore at her laptop.

This is not my wife.

This is uncharacteristic.

She rarely swears at me, and I've done far more to deserve it over the years.

I left my desk in the box room and walked downstairs feeling somewhat angsty: I'm comfortable working out tech issues under usual circumstances, but when it's education-related, gosh, that's a whole new level of pain.

"What's up, hun?" I asked, fearing the next hour would be lost in a fruitless attempt at figuring out some system designed by techies that have barely engaged with an educator during its development.

"It's the f*cking AQA website."

See, I said she'd gone full-on potty-mouthed.

"I've managed to log in after twenty minutes of resetting things," she continued, "but now I can't get into the extranet - it won't let me through!"

This could go one of two ways, I figured.

Soph's exceptionally gifted, but technology isn't her strongest point. "Maybe this is something simple, " said voice number 1 in my head.

"Ah, yeah, but..." the ever-doubtful voice number 2 chipped in.

"This could wipe out your afternoon," he continued helpfully, "So don't get too involved, mate."

It wasn't simple: we'd need someone with admin rights to approve her registration. It was half-term. The odds of someone in her school being available to process this - quite rightly - were close to zero.

Frustrated by our lack of access to AQA's extranet, Soph turned her head from the laptop and said, "It's the only place I can access past papers."

Turning to AI: The Power of ChatGPT4 in Education

We've been talking a lot about AI in the last fortnight. Casting aside her typically luddite position on tech, she'd bought a copy of Dan Fitzpatrick's frankly brilliant book The AI Classroom.

"If we can't get previous papers directly, can't we ask ChatGPT to create some mocks?"

Look, if we'd have been having that conversation six months ago, Soph would've rolled her eyes at me. But this time around, those same eyes lit up. And that says everything to me.

So we fired up ChatGPT4, and tapped in the simple prompt:

'Create a GCSE AQA Mock Paper for English Language Paper 2'

As ever, the response was drafted in front of our eyes, scarily good, but not without fault.

It got two questions slightly wrong, mixing them up with what would be expected for Paper 1. Question 2 was the language question, which we used as question 3. Soph quickly created a new question 2 (synchronise) and swapped that for the bot's original suggestion.

Creating Mock Exam Papers with AI

And there it was, after a couple of 'back and forths', we had a completely unique (but accurate) set of mock questions, complete with original 'source materials': comparing the rise of AI to the early days of the industrial revolution. How apt.

After a few more clicks, we had a 'perfect' level eight response as a reference: in fact, we were able to generate benchmark responses for whatever level we needed.

Enhancing Productivity

So there you have it. My tech-phobic wife had spent at least half an hour trying to get access to the AQA extranet, to zero avail.

But, in less time, she'd achieved something through ChatGPT that far exceeded her requirement.

This is how AI will transform productivity; in education. And any sector you might be working in.

Want to know more? Let’s chat - get in touch.

VIDEO: AMAZING ADVENTURES IN AI

I sat down with interactive narrative guru Krishna Stott (Bellyfeel) recently to talk about how ChatGPT might be used in entertainment, particularly in the gaming space.

We talked about the frankly bonkers things I've created, including a choose-your-own-adventure set in Fawlty Towers, a Factory Records business simulator, using GPT4 in script-writing and, created especially for our chat, a playalong version of daytime TV stalwart, Homes Under The Hammer.

Yup, it's all a bit mad.

Amongst the profound mucking around, I do find time to deploy AI in business operations for my clients.

Just so we're clear on that...

AutoGPT: Unleashing God Mode FOR AI?

As you might have noticed, I've been dabbling with AI recently. However, I wasn't quite ready for what AutoGPT would unleash. And I don't think it was quite ready for me, either. But the promise is tantalising.

First, a quick recap on my experiments with AI du jour, ChatGPT4.

You'll probably have seen that I created an AI maths tutor to help my daughter with her SATs. I also trained it to pick up on my inimitable writing style and made that prompt available for free: in doing so, becoming the world's first open-source copywriter. 

Yes, I've made play-along games based on Countdown and QI (QI:AI?), and a simulator that puts the player in the seat of Tony Wilson's Jaguar as co-owner and chief gob of Factory Records. I'm also working on a 3D wireframe recreation of the Star Wars Arcade: Trench Run game, coded in Swift: caveat, I've never used Swift before.

But, I promise, my main focus here is on how AI can supercharge productivity in the clients I'm working with. So, for example, I've turned process-heavy tasks into prompts that clients run in a flash. And I've used AI to help assess client funding applications before they were submitted, allowing us to fine-tune our response and give us the best chance of success.

The Rise of AutoGPT: A New Era, ALREADY?

Just as I was starting to get my puny noggin around the sheer power of ChatGPT4, all the talk in the nerdosphere turned to a newer incumbent set to make OpenAI's latest release feel as groundbreaking as Microsoft's Clippy (i.e. not). 

Yup, step aside, GPT4; this is AutoGPT's stage now. 

Or at least, it may well be soon.

OK, but what's AutoGPT, I hear you ask, dear reader?

Put simply, it's an open-source AI 'agent' capable of not just turning around scarily accurate responses to an infinite range of requests but of autonomously generating its own tasks and activities based on any prompt you might provide.

You provide the agent with a 'name' (i.e. content marketing expert) and give it a 'role' (i.e. create a plan to generate £2,000 per month in affiliate marketing revenue). From there, you can sit back and watch your AI agent as it sets up a plan to make you a millionaire, Rodders. Cushty.

It's a thing of beauty to watch in motion, too.

ACCESSING AUTOGPT: VIA Godmode

I used a browser-based deployment of the tool, Godmode.space, loaded with some credit from my OpenAI account.

With a name and role assigned, AutoGPT breaks down its work plan into separate tasks, and for each task, it starts to conduct research online and via ChatGPT. Then, as it burns through its actions, you can watch it develop code and text files to achieve your ultimate goal, setting up new jobs when it realises it needs more information.

(To that end, I hope that no one asks this thing to start making paperclips...)

So far, so mad.

I figured I'd try it out on something meaty. Literally.

Putting AutoGPT to the Test: The Burger Joint Challenge

I live just off the high street of a bustling village in South Manchester: a place people often visit because of the many and mainly independent eateries on offer. One of the units recently came on the market after the previous tenant's business failed. A greasy burger joint: there, I said this project was going to be meaty.

Farewell, GBI, Godmode will ensure your replacement has a better chance of success than you did…

I defined the project as follows:

There's an empty retail unit on Wilmslow Road, in Didsbury, Manchester, UK. The unit was previously a small burger restaurant, Gourmet Burger Inc, but this was not successful. Analyse current information on the area's demographics, alongside trends in retail and food, to prepare a business proposal to make the unit a success.

So, when Godmode started this work, I was blown away. It began by setting up three headline tasks, one analysing demographics local to the area, a second researching current trends in the food and retail industry (to identify business opportunities for the unit), and a third preparing a business proposal based on the first two inputs.

As it whirred through tasks, consulting demographic data and constructing its own code to analyse data from multiple sources, I started scrolling through my contacts to find my bank manager.

It began to suggest that, following demographic and trends analysis, a clean-living outlet might be perfect for the spot. I replied, saying we might want a menu for every part of the day, and it threw that into its analysis, too.

"Blimey," I thought, "I'm going to be rich."

Sadly, things broke down from there. My dreams of turning a vacant unit into a thriving restaurant, with no prior food industry experience, unfolded as rapidly as you could say 'procrastinate': because that's exactly what the AI started to do.

The demographic research Godmode had conducted was no longer enough. It needed to fine-tune the code it had created to analyse the research data, and with the code adjusted, it wanted to conduct the research again. Rinse, repeat.

The AI started on tasks that it didn't complete. For example, it suggested we apply for an alcohol license via Manchester City Council. An informed move...but it didn't see it through. Instead, Godmode started another continuous cycle of demographic research and code adjustment: this went on for about ten minutes. 

Finally, my frustrated little sausage fingers bashed out, "Enough already; just give me the goddam plan!" 

And here it is:

Based on our analysis of the target audience and the current food retail industry trends, it may be useful to have a fast-casual burger restaurant serving high-quality burgers at an affordable price point. The restaurant could offer a variety of burgers, including vegetarian and gluten-free options, and provide unique sauce options to differentiate itself from other fast-food chains. 

So, after all that AI-driven research and analysis, the plan was to restart the business that had just failed in the same unit. Genius.

AutoGPT's Limitations and the Future of AI

But let's not discount this tech yet. Part of the challenge lies in AutoGPT's ability - or lack thereof - to extract data from websites optimised for SEO and general readability. As AIs increasingly scrape real-time data (remember, GPT4 has only been trained on data up until 2021), this will change. 

And when it does, I think we truly will start to unleash 'God Mode' in our AI platforms.