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Hi. I trust you and yours are well.
Thank you always for reading my books and free bi-monthly broadcasts, and using my tools and strategies for winning in a VUCA world with freedom, power and peace of mind.*
*You probably know by now: VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. Perhaps you also know the Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times 😉
A confession (please don’t tell my family): I was playing Wordle, the game Tim Wardle developed and then sold to the New York Times, where you have to guess a 5-letter word. You have 6 guesses, then you lose. And I did not find the word. So after 5 failed guesses, I caved and asked ChatGPT.
But ChatGPT was not as smart as I thought it was.
The machine, developed by OpenAI, took the world by storm in early 2023. And it does amazing things for me. For example, I had told it to write a course outline based on my book Communicate or Die, and it did an excellent job. And it’s helping us create an online self-assessment, complete with diagnostics and recommendations, for my online leadership course PowerCatalyst
But now I wanted it to help me with a Wordle game. If you don’t know Wordle, you may want to try it, it’s very cool, and free. https://www.nytimes.com/games/
In fact, my family and I play Wordle every day, each of us separately. Wordle has become a kind of addiction. So perhaps the fact that you can play it only once a day is a blessing in disguise.
The idea is that you have 6 tries to guess a 5-letter word. And a little like MasterMind, which I played as a teen in the 1970s, you get feedback: a green tile for the correct letter in the correct place, and a yellow letter for the correct letter in the wrong place.
One day I was stuck. For the life of me, I could not come up with a workable word.
So in a moment of weakness, I turned to ChatGPT. I thought AI must be able to help me. I gave it a simple command: “please list all English 5-letter words where the 2nd letter is E, the 3rd letter is V, the 4th letter is E.
ChatGPT gave me a whole bunch of words like LOVER or RIVER, which were obviously wrong. I kept saying, “Thank you, but you are wrong.” And ChatGPT kept apologizing, only to provide more wrong words.
What do we learn from this? ChatGPT is an amazing tool, but you should treat it like a really eager intern. It will produce a lot of good stuff, along with some incredibly stupid mistakes.
And just in case AI ever takes control of humanity, I want to be nice to ChatGPT. I’d like to make clear that I am grateful to ChatGPT, I think ChatGPT is super cool, I love ChatGPT.
To learn more about effective speaking, check out my book Communicate or Die.
What do you think? I look forward to reading you.
Best,
Thomas
For additional questions or to schedule a call to learn how you can leverage the power of effective communication to maximize potential and impact for you and your team, please email coach@maximizeu.life
