What AI Can Actually Do and Some Things We Know

Happy Sunday (and happy Passover to our readers who celebrate)! This is an especially unleavened edition of our newsletter. 

This week: Michael Taylor explains how to become an expert in any subject using AI’s pattern-recognition capabilities; Dan Shipper unpacks the implications on creativity of how LLMs condense complex concepts into consumable morsels; Evan Armstrong synthesizes his most important insights from two years of writing with the help of ChatGPT and Claude; and Casey Rosengren shares practical tools from acceptance and commitment therapy to help you get unstuck. On How Do You Use ChatGPT?, Dan chats with Hume CEO Alan Cowen, whose AI model can decode human emotions. Plus: our take on the latest business and tech news.

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Our stories

🔏 "How to Become an Expert at Anything With AI" by Michael Taylor: Want to become an expert in a new field overnight? AI can help you do just that. Michael Taylor teaches you how to use ChatGPT and Claude to identify patterns in successful writing, products, and more. Read this if you want to use AI's analysis capabilities to level up your skills in any domain. 

"What Can Language Models Actually Do?” by Dan Shipper/Chain of Thought: One way to think about LLMs is that they just compress text into a smaller size, like a foot crushing a can of Coke. But the smaller version isn't a piece of junk; it's a perfectly packaged mini-Coke that's still drinkable. This has profound implications for ideas, making them far more legible, interesting, and monetizable. Read this if you want to understand how to harness the power of language models for your work.

"Some Things I Know (And Some Things I Don't)" by Evan Armstrong/Napkin Math: Evan fed all his writing into ChatGPT and Claude to synthesize what he's learned. The result? A mind palace of insights, each sentence a doorway to deeper understanding. Read this to explore his most important ideas, from which companies win (and why) to the power of AI. 🔏 Paid subscribers get a guide on how to do this exercise with their own writing.

"How to Do Hard Things" by Casey Rosengren/No Small Plans: Want to build a company but find yourself stuck? Casey Rosengren found that acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can help you go for it. Read this if you want to learn practical tools for getting out of your own way and taking action toward your goals. 🔏 Every subscribers can take Casey's new ACT-based mindfulness course, The Hidden Discipline, for just $699 (normally $1,000).