🦾 AI is finally starting to help with grunt work (and my biggest fear)

There's a worry that constantly gnaws at the back of my mind.

When it comes to practical things and certain details, I'm a bit sloppy. I don't know how many times I've written something like: "The meeting is on Tuesday, August 31," only for someone to point out that August 31 is a Monday, so is the meeting on Monday or Tuesday?

In most cases this doesn't cause any major problems, but when it comes to my paid talks, it would be very bad. The people who have booked me have often gathered their entire staff at a conference venue, or sent out a public invitation and lots of people have made their way there.

So my worry is that the phone will ring or an email will show up in my inbox saying: "Where are you?"

It hasn't happened so far, and I really do try to be careful, but it could happen. Especially since I give quite a lot of talks.

That's why the worry is always gnawing at the back of my mind.

Or was gnawing.

Now it's gone, and that's thanks to AI.

Saved me two months of work

I've connected ChatGPT to my email and my calendar and asked it to check once a week that I've put into the calendar what I've agreed to in my emails. I also asked it to search back through my emails and compare them with the calendar, to make sure there was no old miss (there wasn't).

Every morning it also checks whether I've forgotten to reply to any emails.

Lately, AI has gotten much better at this kind of practical everyday stuff. Another example is pitching my book to countries other than Sweden. Besides being able to translate the entire manuscript with AI's help (which I wrote about last week), I've gotten help with some dull and time-consuming tasks.

From the publisher I got a Google Sheets document (like Excel) with contact details for foreign publishers. AI has gone through it, checked every person and email address to see whether that person still works there, and whether there are others at that publisher who should be contacted. It has also searched for and found more publishers in each country, along with relevant contacts. In both cases it has updated the Sheets document directly.

On top of that, it has mapped the publication of AI books in each country and reviewed the country's AI debate, so I can write a pitch tailored to that country.

I wrote the pitch myself, and after I reviewed the lists, did spot checks, googled on my own and tried to understand a bit of the local AI debate, AI creates email drafts directly in my inbox, inserting the pitch text and the manuscript. I check one last time and ask AI to send the emails.

After that, it's tasked with monitoring the inbox. If I haven't received a reply within three weeks, it reminds me to send a follow-up. If I've received a reply saying, for example, "we take up to 12 weeks to get back to you," it notes that and reminds me to follow up in 12 weeks.

I've tried to estimate how long it would take to do all of this myself, as thoroughly as AI. First of all, I obviously wouldn't have been able to translate the manuscript into more than 20 languages. That would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Instead, I would probably have translated a few chapters into English myself and sent those.

All the other work, finding and going through hundreds of publishers, assessing how relevant they are, mapping out who works there and noting everything in an Excel document, would surely have taken a two or three of weeks of full-time work. Then trying to understand the local publishing scene and debate would have been very difficult and time-consuming, and largely not doable since much of it takes place in languages I don't know.

We land at one to two months of full-time work saved.

In other words, it wouldn't have been possible for me to send the manuscript as far and wide as I can now.

Less drudge for us

ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini now have these capabilities. They can no longer just chat and make images and videos, but also carry out tasks. That makes it possible to plug them into our workflows. Instead of only being able to explain to you how to do something, they can increasingly do it themselves.

I haven't automated any execution yet (apart from reminders to myself), but review every step before it gets the go-ahead to continue. That way I've caught a few small errors. I'll probably keep doing that for quite a while, because AI isn't perfect. But then again, neither am I. Now that there are two of us helping out, checking and reminding, the risk of errors drops considerably.

It's still early and the features are limited, but it doesn't take a great visionary to understand how much boring grunt work AI will be able to handle for us before long.

Mathias Sundin
Angry Optimist