JEN_AI
What happens when you mess with the machines? Hack around, find out.
//What’s this all about?
Hello, world. I’m Jenni Munroe. I work at Google, formerly DeepMind (world-leading artificial intelligence lab), after a stint consulting at Accenture.
For my Computer Science MSc degree research I specialised in AI and tried to teach machines how to draw strawberries, grass and such. It was magical but ridiculous. Fast-forward longer than I’d care to admit and our Generative AI Future has arrived with a BANG, everyone’s having a go, and I am loving it.
Also, I’ll be back to work at Google from mat leave quite soon and now need to remember how to talk to adults and use a computer.
So it’s time to hack around. If I’ve learned one thing from working at Google, it’s to make every stray thought or brain-sneeze into an artefact you can point to. And so, instead of just hacking into the void while the baby sleeps, “JEN_AI” was born.
JEN_AI is an experiment with a two-pronged goal:
Get up to speed with AI & tech
..by playing with AI & tech
First challenge: Use AI to co-generate a newsletter on the latest developments in AI & technology.
Or to put it another way: “NET_NEW News is a hybrid GenAI/JenAI experiment in co-creating a micro-newsletter for edutainment.”
Enough chat, let’s GPT.
//NET_NEW_NEWS
Your Byte-Size Tech-Culture Fix.
Jan 5 2025 - Issue #001
Ctrl+Alt+Repeat
//THIS_WEEK
2025 Consumer Electronics Show: Your walls are smarter than you.
At CES 2025, AI is juicing everything from huge TVs to Apple’s wall-mounted smart home control hubs. Nvidia’s new GPU chips lead the buzz. Time to smart-lock your doors; the future is moving in.
The gadgets of tomorrow, tomorrow. The Verge’s coverage
//BESTOF_2024
2024: AI, BioTech, and Literal Moonshots
Gilead’s 6-month HIV prevention shot landed a major win. Google flexed its quantum muscles, while SpaceX’s “chopsticks” caught rockets mid-air. Our old pal AI? It’s designing proteins, out-diagnosing doctors, and keeping the memes trolling.
Full breakdown? The Atlantic nailed it.
//HOT_TAKE
Tech Predictions for 2025
TikTok’s time is up? AI reality TV? Vice-President Elon Musk goes to Mars? 2025 is shaping up to be a Black Mirror season we didn’t ask for. Share your wildest predictions in the comments.
Here’s a view from WIRED on 2025.
//JUST_DROPPED
That’s it for today. Mark those other 2,473 emails as read - they’re 2024-You’s problem now.
PS:
• If you liked this, let me know or maybe forward it to anyone still wondering if AI is just Sci-Fi. Who knows, I might make a couple more 🥸
• Reply with your hottest tech takes and most constructive feedback ideas. If they’re good, I’ll steal them (and credit you, maybe).
Aaaaand… breathe.
Well that was fun.
Reflections on the process.
For this week’s newsletter hack challenge I used these tools:
ChatGPT for AI newsletter content collaboration & coaching
Sub-stack for newsletter / blog / site hosting (bonus: AI image generation)
If you haven’t used an AI chatbot yet, just do it. You can ask them literally anything and it’s just so, so impressive how natural and knowledgeable the response is. (You should have seen the attempts at AI poetry etc. back in 2010.) Here are two: ChatGPT from OpenAI and Gemini from Google.
ChatGPT was a talented and motivating coach and content collaborator, and I was surprised at just how good it made me feel to hear something positive back about every daft input I made. I feel like it also provided a public service in that no real humans had to listen to me go deep into things no one else cares about (Sorry to folks who are here now. Whoops).
I used ChatGPT to generate images for the Substack site logos and banners but ended up just using Substack’s inbuilt logo tool as the images were cleaner. I do like that ChatGPT gives you the code it generates to generate downloads. However, getting text on images looking slick still appears to be a weak spot.
Substack is just a teeny bit fiddly to edit one-handed on a phone while nursing a baby, but that’s an edge case I can forgive. It’s great that you can get a slick simple newsletter out for free but understandably they do funnel you firmly towards monetizing your internet friends. I’ve been told that Ghost is the preferred option if you know you’ll want to pay and get paid.
Thoughts on the outcome.
Not bad? Some quirky little phrases like “AI is juicing everything”. The newsletter met the goal of delivering snappy punchy tech news. It’s nowhere near as good as professional journalism but it’s alright for someone who hasn’t studied an essay-writing subject since age 16.
Is any of this useful? Probably not - there are thousands of AI news articles and summaries and this just links to three well known & obvious tech culture sources. But hey at least I’ve read my own summary now! So Goal 1 of JEN_AI (get up to date on AI & tech) is well underway.
I enjoyed bouncing content ideas around with ChatGPT, especially for structure, wordplay & tone and as an encouraging advisor (especially for breaking writer’s block and not leaving the task unfinished). And I quickly fell down a nested rabbit hole of other potential AI hacks to explore.
Which brings me to..
What should JEN_AI’s next challenge be? Find Gemini’s hidden gems? A NotebookLM podcast? An AI video? Any suggestions of your fave tech tools and stupid things to do with them are most welcomed.
Over and out!
Til our next chat, if there is one.
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(By the way, the irony that - after managing to avoid it for decades - I’ve basically just started writing my first blog, with so many of my own words, at the first point in history when I could get a machine to write them for me.. is not lost on me. Maybe there’s still a role for humanity yet.)