#44 - Meeting ChatGPT
What I’m Reading
Getting Past No is a classic and my favourite book on how to negotiate. I always flick through this and my notes when I know I have a negotiation coming up. It gives you an entire framework to approach things and examples.
My overarching takeaway is firstly keeping in mind not to see negotiation as a win-lose situation. Secondly is not to get caught up in either side’s position (the specific £ figure) but to focus on interests and being creative. It has so many far-reaching applications from a promotion, to contract negotiations, to buying a car.
Resource of the week
Since getting told how important it is to breathe through your nose at all times, for a whole host of reasons, I’ve started using these nasal sprays for the first time ever which I can confirm does the job well.
Quote
Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Thoughts
So I recently completed on a BTL property in Derby. This week was when the first rental payment was due, and would you know it, it get a text saying ‘your tenant has fallen into financial difficulty’. Just my luck. Wasn’t that impressed that the agent didn’t even bother to call me.
I called them and they told me that they have never been in arrears from when they moved in in August and that they should clear everything by the end of the month. The timing of it seems a little sus to me, I hope it’s just a coincidence, which is another case in point if you’re starting out in property to invest to get rent guarantee insurance. When starting out, a non-paying tenant could be the entire cash flow or most of it, so it’s a no-brainer.
I had a play with ChatGPT in a recent TikTok video, it’s very impressive what it can do and I haven’t even scratched the surface. For a number of years, people have been saying that the rise of AI will start impacting jobs and multiple industries. I always thought it was a bit premature to say so, as people tend to get carried away, there are so many innovations that were meant to change the way we live but end up not making the impact we thought.
This time, it seems different. We already saw how frighteningly accurate DALL-E 2 was in interpreting a human request and generating a brand-new image from a description. It’s different because tools like DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT are not just theoretical tools anymore but they are causing disruption in fields that are long established. It’s able to generate entire essays from scratch, schools and universities don’t currently have guidelines for this. It’s able to interpret Python code and summarise it to the user, even writing Python according to user instructions. I've seen it write CVs, I asked it to write a letter to my estate agent. Even these things alone can be disruptive to existing industries. And there are so many things it can do I don’t even know yet.
Now I’m not suggesting that it will replace an experienced Python developer for example any time soon, but for simple things that you might have previously asked a freelancer to do, you might be able to do yourself with the help of ChatGPT and a little bit of knowledge. And that’s how it starts. I see competition for AI tools really heating up and that’s what drives progress.
After all, from what I’ve seen, the vast majority of regular jobs (at least over 80%) don’t need much decision-making once someone has been doing it for a while, it’s the same routine over and over. They don’t require high-skill, creative, highly, educated, qualified, people that make difficult decisions. They are responding to routine emails, sending out quotes, checking invoices, dealing with customer enquiries, answering basic questions, reviewing applications, stock management, basic data processing etc. Nothing I don’t think these advanced AI tools won’t be able to handle these sorts of requests in the immediate future (if not already).
There are very real usage applications to the rise of AI that are already affecting us as we speak. In some cases, it might be better to use something like ChatGPT than Google where there is overlap. I think a lot of industries will look very different in the next 10 years, changing at a rate we’ve never seen before. A little scary but also exciting with all the opportunities it provides. I personally would be open if the property sector got some modernising, it’s one of the most archaic industries considering how much money is involved.
Next, I think I'm going to run an experiment and ask it to generate property TikTok content ideas and see how that's received! Stay tuned.
Definitely have a play with ChatGPT if you haven’t already, it's free and it will change the way you think about AI. Even if not, it’s quite fun!
Hans