The Best Use for AI

The more I work with AI, the more I'm sure AI won't replace me anytime soon.

Don't get me wrong: I love working with AI.

I've completed a half-dozen prompting courses to learn how to use AI better.

I have paid subscriptions to Claude, Perplexity, and Google Gemini, which I use for different tasks.

I've trained Claude on my blog (735+ posts) so that it can write in my tone and style.*

Professionally, I've used Claude to refine ideas, develop strategies, build no-code websites, optimize SEO/AEO for my blog (dpThoughts.ca), and much more.

Personally, I've used it to diagnose a minor medical issue, help build out my upcoming political platform, and lose 32 lbs in 8 weeks!

My wife has told me she's sick of hearing about Claude. She calls it "my boyfriend."

I don't care... I love working with AI!

And I fully understand how powerful AI tools are becoming.

And yet...

... I'm still able to use my expertise to correct it.

I've given Claude specific instructions never to be a sycophant, and to challenge me freely and often. I debate it constantly.

And I can still win those debates.

Often Claude will output what might otherwise seem like a perfectly reasonable, perfectly practical idea.

Or a great piece of copy that appears to meet the objectives I set out.

Or a process that seems like it can work...

... and I can still stop and say, "Wait a minute, that's not going to work, and here's why", and then adjust the prompt to make the output even better.

Claude can absolutely enhance my thinking.

But it can't replace it.

Which is why I won't stop offering any of my seven consulting services anytime soon.

I recently listened to a fantastic Lex Fridman podcast in which he interviewed Nvidia founder Jensen Huang. If you haven't listened to it, make the time, because Jensen's ideas on leadership and thinking about problems from first principles are pure gold.

But something Jensen said really resonated with me:

"If your job is the task—then you’re very highly going to be disrupted. If your job’s purpose includes you, certain tasks — then it’s vital that you go learn how to use AI to automate those tasks."

Put another way, if AI can do your job, you won't have a job for long.

But when you can use AI to help you do your job even better?

That's the best use for AI.

And it's when the magic happens.

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* Despite this, I never use AI to write my blog posts... that's all me. But having Claude trained on my writing style certainly helps when I need it to write my website copy.