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How a Writer Uses AI Without Losing His Voice

Overview

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How a Writer Uses AI Without Losing His Voice

AI & I

3 DAYS AGO
AI & I

AI & I

3 DAYS AGO
OverviewShownoteHighlightsTranscriptChaptersPins

Shownote

Craig Mod used to pay Campaign Monitor roughly $7,000 a year to send his newsletters. After rebuilding the tool himself with AI, his bill is closer to $150. It’s the kind of thing that convinces him we’re about to enter a “golden age of tool building”—one ...

Highlights

Craig Mod, a writer and technologist, discusses his approach to using AI as a tool for building custom software, contrasting it with his strict avoidance of AI for creative writing. He argues that AI enables a 'golden age of tool building,' allowing individuals to create affordable, personalized alternatives to expensive, slow-to-innovate incumbent software.
00:00
Tech-free mornings preserve deep focus.
05:53
Reduced costs from $7,000/year to about $150/year
08:49
Ephemeral, paid communities are better
10:39
AI enables a golden age of tool building
15:00
AI is a research assistant, not a writer.
24:58
Technology in general, not AI specifically, is the issue.
28:02
A tech-free buffer in the morning is crucial for deep focus.
37:57
We are in a genuinely special, epochal moment of technological shift
39:45
AI is a JPEG of human knowledge.
47:45
Humanity's purpose may be to create a training set for AI

Chapters

Introduction
00:00
Rebuilding Quicken and Campaign Monitor with AI
03:51
Building The Good Place, a private Twitter alternative for Craig’s members
06:24
Why we’re entering a “golden age of tool building”
10:39
Why AI could help writers build audiences
12:17
Using AI to build a newsletter archive and a searchable board-meeting Q&A library
17:35
Creating a technology-free buffer to protect deep thinking
27:58
Why Craig is resisting the temptation to “mainline” AI for ten hours a day
30:31
Why anthropomorphizing AI is “psychotic,” and why Apple got Siri right
39:44
Being adopted, and making peace with humanity’s fragile place in an AI future
47:42

Transcript

Craig Mod: I wake up and I don't touch the internet, I won't look at my phone. I won't go online until long after lunch. As soon as I touch my phone, I feel the chemicals shift. And I can't go into any kind of deep thinking place, or deep attention place, ...