Two (Make that Three) Fantastic Uses for AI

I don’t use AI to write (as a ghostwriter), but I have been using it effectively for two things:

  1. To clarify grammar rules.
    I’m not referring to grammar checking; I’m referring to grammar rules. For example, I may ask questions regarding the rules governing periods, exclamation marks, and periods when closing block quotes ending in a biblical reference. I’m able to “chat” with AI for clarification. For example, after providing detailed explanations with examples, AI finishes with this:

Key Point:

• Periods are generally omitted from the end of the quote if followed by a citation because the citation becomes part of the sentence’s final structure.
• Question marks and exclamation points, however, are preserved if they belong to the original text.

Does that help explain the difference more clearly?

  1. Fast look up of Bible verses.
    I may have a rough paraphrase of a verse, but I can’t recall the reference. I ask ChatGPT 4o or Perplexity something like, “What is the Bible verse where Solomon prays for wisdom as the new king? Give me both the ESV and NIV versions.” It works great and is much faster than using my Bible software (Logos) to find the references. AI returns the verse(s) in each translation.

I’m sure that my examples can be modified to apply to many writing projects and genres.

6 Likes

“…I ask ChatGPT 4o or Perplexity something like…”

Are you currently using both AI products to see which works ‘best’ for you and hope to land on one….or to have two separate results to compare for every search. I’m currently using the free version of Perplexity for answers to questions. I’m not looking for ‘it’ to create (e.g., write) anything for me…at this stage.

I have fantastic uses for AI, too.

  1. Image upscaling.
  2. Image sharpening (when it’s more than an unsharp mask will manage).
  3. Audio transcription.

The first two I have been doing for many years now. I think the intent of this post is specifically uses for Large Language Models (LLMs).

Heck, if you’ve been taking photos on your iPhones for the last 5(?) years, you’ve been using AI.

1 Like

I’m a professional writer, and I’ve started using ChatGPT to help me prepare my “shitty first drafts”, which is the hardest bit of writing for me.

I then edit the :poop: out of them, which is still hard work.

I genuinely think I’ve 5x’d my writing productivity.

I’ve just used it to write a free 2-week email course.

I wrote about it here: https://www.clarkeching.com/1weekswritingin90minutes/


Also, the quality is way up because, after I’ve done my rewriting, I use it to clean up and polish like a copy editor would. Sometimes it’s better than a professional copy editor, sometimes it’s worse. It’s definitely better than if I did it all by myself!

3 Likes

I tend to use ChatGPT for general queries and Perplexity when I need specific references and links to material. On occasion, I’ll try both to compare. My default tends to be ChatGPT.

Yes, which I presume my examples illustrate. :slightly_smiling_face:

Since I was on a roll, I decided to ask ChatGPT for app advice. I wrote:

I am going to upload several examples of my articles and presentations. Analyze my writing and help me choose the best writing app for my needs. Keep in mind that I write reports, blog articles, and give speeches using my notes which often have images of slides in them. I also include footnotes. I only use Apple devices. I need the files to sync across my devices with iCloud. Many of my articles are 3-5 pages long so it helps for me to be able to see an outline of my article as I type. What app do you recommend?

ChatGPT returned a thorough, and I think, reasonable recommendation. Obviously, the response depends a great deal on how the prompt is framed and the variables included.

Here is the response I got back:


Based on the articles and presentations you’ve uploaded, I’ve noted several key patterns in your writing and content structure:

  1. Outline and Structure:

    • Your articles and presentations often have a clear, logical structure with headings, bullet points, numbered lists, and sections. The use of headings (e.g., “Practical Advice,” “Introduction,” “Application”) helps organize your thoughts effectively.
    • You regularly use sub-points, as seen in your devotionals and practical advice columns, which require a good outline feature.
  2. Use of Footnotes and Citations:

    • Many of your documents, such as the devotionals and leadership guides, include footnotes with citations from the Bible, literature, and other sources.
  3. Inclusion of Visuals:

    • You sometimes reference or rely on slide images in your presentations, though none of the documents I reviewed included actual embedded images. You’ve mentioned using images of slides, which suggests you’d benefit from an app that supports embedded media easily.
  4. Cross-Device Syncing:

    • You require seamless syncing across Apple devices through iCloud, which limits the tools to those that support Apple ecosystems efficiently.
  5. Article Length:

    • Your typical articles range from 3 to 5 pages, fitting within the scope of a moderately long document where you’d benefit from an outline view to navigate different sections of your writing.

Recommendation

Considering these elements, Ulysses emerges as the best app for your needs. Here’s why:

  • Outline and Structure: Ulysses has an excellent organization system with an intuitive hierarchical structure that allows you to see the outline of your documents. You can add keywords, organize notes with nested folders, and break down long articles into manageable sections.

  • Footnotes and Citations: Ulysses supports footnotes and citations seamlessly, ensuring you can reference Scripture and other texts efficiently while maintaining your preferred writing style. It also allows for custom formatting of footnotes, which is important for your citation-heavy work.

  • Media Embedding: Ulysses supports adding images, which is crucial when embedding slides into your presentations. You can drag and drop images into your documents and easily manage them alongside your text.

  • Sync Across Devices: Ulysses integrates perfectly with iCloud, allowing your documents to sync across all your Apple devices (iPad, iPhone, MacBook), which suits your current setup.

  • Distraction-Free Writing: Ulysses provides a clean, distraction-free interface similar to iA Writer but with added functionalities, such as robust file management, which may be useful given the number of articles and presentations you handle.

  • Export Options: Ulysses offers multiple export formats (PDF, DOCX, ePub, HTML), which would be useful for distributing your articles in different formats, whether for internal reports, publications, or blog posts.

While iA Writer is a minimalistic app that also integrates with iCloud, its outlining and organizational features are not as strong as Ulysses, making it less suited for the detailed structure your writing often requires. Apple Pages, while powerful for formatting and visuals, lacks the same distraction-free writing experience and seamless note-taking functionality of Ulysses.

Conclusion:

Given your writing style, use of footnotes, embedding needs, and requirement for seamless cross-device syncing, Ulysses would be the most suitable writing tool. Would you like more information on how to set up Ulysses for your work?


Me: Sure. But first, a question. Why Ulysses instead of Pages?

ChatGPT:

That’s a great question! Here’s a comparison between Ulysses and Apple Pages in the context of your specific writing needs:

  1. Outline View and Document Management

• Ulysses: It offers a flexible, hierarchical outline that lets you break down your articles into smaller sections (called “sheets”). This is extremely helpful for navigating longer documents and keeping track of ideas. You can also organize articles by folders, keywords, and groups. For your articles and presentations, which are often structured into sections and subpoints, this makes it easy to jump between different parts of the document.

• Pages: While Pages does have an outline mode, it is not as intuitive or as focused on section-based navigation for large documents. Pages is more focused on formatting and layout, which may make it harder to see the overall structure of your document while you write.

  1. Footnotes and Citations

• Ulysses: Footnotes are well-integrated into the flow of writing. They are easy to manage and insert, without disrupting your writing process. This is crucial given your frequent use of biblical and literary references .

• Pages: While Pages does support footnotes, managing them can be clunkier, especially when dealing with longer documents or multiple footnotes across several pages. Pages excels more in formatting but doesn’t offer as seamless an experience for text-heavy documents with numerous citations.

  1. Image Embedding

• Ulysses: Ulysses allows for easy image embedding, but it’s more focused on writing rather than formatting visuals. It’s great if your goal is to integrate slides or images alongside text, but without complex formatting. You can drag and drop images, but the design tools are more limited than Pages.

• Pages: Pages excels in layout design, allowing you to arrange text and images with precision. If your documents require extensive use of visuals (like complex reports with graphs or media-rich presentations), Pages has more design control. However, you may not need that level of control based on the current examples you’ve uploaded.

  1. Distraction-Free Writing

• Ulysses: This app shines in providing a clean, distraction-free environment for writing. You can focus entirely on the content without worrying about formatting or layout until you are ready to export. This is particularly useful for writing and revising lengthy articles and devotionals where content is the priority.

• Pages: Pages has a great balance between writing and layout design, but it’s not as distraction-free. Its interface is more complex, with numerous tools that might distract from your writing flow, especially when working on text-heavy documents.

  1. Cross-Device Syncing and File Organization

• Ulysses: Ulysses uses iCloud to sync your documents effortlessly across all your Apple devices. You can start writing on your iPad and continue on your iPhone or Mac without needing to worry about file management or formatting issues. Ulysses also has robust organization features (tags, folders, goals) that help keep your documents in order.

• Pages: Pages also syncs via iCloud, but file management is more traditional—documents are individual files, and you need to organize them manually. For someone with numerous articles and presentations, this could become cumbersome.

  1. Export Options

• Ulysses: It allows for easy export in various formats (PDF, DOCX, HTML, Markdown, and ePub). You can customize your export options to match your needs (e.g., blog posts, reports, or devotionals). This is ideal for content creation across different platforms.

• Pages: Pages has strong export options too, including PDF and DOCX. However, Pages lacks the streamlined, customizable export workflows Ulysses offers. Ulysses’ exports can be tailored for each kind of output you need, like publishing to a blog or creating a print-ready PDF, without requiring extensive reformatting.

  1. Writing Focus

• Ulysses: It is designed first and foremost for writers. It helps you focus on content creation, allowing you to add notes, comments, and research directly within the document without distraction. Given your style of writing, where content and structure come first, this emphasis on text over layout could help maintain focus.

• Pages: Pages is more geared toward those needing both writing and layout control in one platform. It’s excellent for visually rich documents like brochures or newsletters, but that might be overkill for most of your articles and devotionals.

Summary:

• Ulysses is ideal if your primary focus is writing and organizing text-heavy content (e.g., articles, devotionals, speeches), with minimal distractions and easy handling of footnotes and citations. The app’s outline view, distraction-free interface, and file management system make it the better choice for creating and managing large volumes of written content across devices.

• Pages is more suitable if you frequently need to create highly formatted documents that combine text with complex layouts, such as newsletters, posters, or visually rich reports. However, for your current style, Ulysses’ focus on content and structure outweighs the layout benefits Pages offers.

Does this comparison help clarify things? Would you like guidance on how to get started with Ulysses now?

2 Likes

I’m a community college adminstrator and I have to write a massive report for the state government for one of our large academic IT programs. I was fumbling around with the topics and structure, etc. So I used ChatGPT to help me pull it together and it worked amazingly.

I then used Perplexity to help me analyze survey data from three different subject types and it did an amazing job and wrote it better than I could. I then edited the document as it appears I’m better at editing than I am writing from scratch.

The report was sent on to the final editors in less than an hour. Something that could have taken many hours or even days, is now done :smile:

1 Like

Many thanks for this post/thread. Lots of useful thinking here. I’m a pastor/minister and have started to use AI. Like all people who have the trust of others in their writing, I need to use it with integrity, but it’s a powerful tool for surfacing, reorganising, rewriting and distilling information. I tend to have very specific and detailed prompts which produce good results. As with any tool, it needs to be used with care: in theology it can present some spectacularly opinionated replies on areas where a plethora of views exist (and, often, without showing its workings).

Me too. It’s much faster than Logos, and it’s easy to then interrogate the returned scripture - for example location, people (who was Elishama again?), background, cross references… all faster than Logos.

All the public LLMs seem to have dubious practices, which does give me pause. Perplexity ignoring robots.txt files asking it not to index particular content has led me to avoid that particular tool. There’s a clear sense of entitlement among some LLM hosts.

This has been a game changer. A lot of my source resources are podcasts or videos; the ability to create a transcript for personal use is very convenient.

I’m doing that for devotionals and sermons. It’s not that I don’t have to rewrite them. It’s not that I don’t do research first. It’s not that I don’t pray on what I should be communicating. But, that done, ChatGPT has proven to be effective in helping me structure information in a way that helps me communicate better. It’s no different to engaging with a Bible commentary - it requires discernment and consideration. And I always end up “editing the :poop: out of them” so they work. But the end result is derived more quickly, and seems to me to be better. Yesterday I had a close deadline, and the need to produce 350 words for a newspaper. I wrote 600 words. ChatGPT brought it down to 350, exactly :slight_smile: ! (I had to edit a couple of points, but it saved me a lot of time.)

I’ve just started using NotebookLM and it seems to have huge potential. I am currently looking at social justice and biblical justice… just adding a few of my sources has opened up new areas to explore.

Has anyone here integrated Obsidian and ChatGPT? (Maybe I should ask ChatGPT how…)

2 Likes

As my work involves 3rd level support I more an more tend to ask copilot (as that is allowed) for quick ideas on technical issues/questions. As SharePoint/Power-BI and all that stuff in all different versions is so huge I speed up my process to discuss ideas and reasons for issues that come up and how to solve them - of course with nothing client specific, but just being able to throw ideas around when non of your co-workers got time is very efficient for me :blush:.

Also just being able to ask Copilot what this or that stupid error message means is a god sent😊.

Pretty amazing! Just think what AI will be like in five years!

1 Like

I did not know that could be done!

Aiko, by Sindre Sorhus is a simple (and free) app that can take any audio file and convert it to a transcript, all on-device.

3 Likes

I did a similar situation to your writing app advice yesterday @Bmosbacker

I was tasked with creating a registration form that had a bunch of rules and required conditional logic. Frankly, I didn’t have much time for the request to begin thinking of how to organize it. I asked ChatGPT best recommendation between 4 platforms that I was considering. It gave me the pros and cons of each, then gave a suggestion.

Ironically, I already had an account with Cognito Forms, asked it again to help create the form. It went through step by step, which field, which choice, which rule, how to apply. Form took all of less than 10 minutes.

Other AI things I am considering:

Coral AI this looks very crazy and powerful. Upload PDFs, auto-summarize, cross-reference, auto-citation. Where was this during grad school?

Amen to that! I did three graduate programs and was constantly writing and citing. I still hate creating citations, even with modern tools! My Constitutional Education Law professor introduced me to Endnote, which I’ve used ever since.

“Ruining the world” to clarify grammar rules or to look up bible verses doesn’t sound so fantastic to me…

And I’m no better myself; my team recently started using GitHub Copilot to speed up typing boilerplate code…

This really bothers me.

How do others feel about using AI, from an ecological perspective?

2 Likes

We probably don’t want to go too far down this rabbit hole for fear of getting involved in politics. In response to your question, I have three brief non-political thoughts.

  1. God has created us as stewards and overseers of his creation. This is a universal call regardless of how religious or non-religious one may be. Stewardship means doing what we can while meeting all of our obligations to avoid unnecessarily polluting and causing ecological harm.
  2. We are also to build culture and civilizations. Inevitably, this will result in pollution, some of which is bad, some of which is not, depending on how one defines “pollution.” A Neanderthal building a fire pollutes. Merely changing the environment is not always bad and is often necessary for survival.
  3. Civilization, work, art, transportation, computing, et al., are unavoidable sources of some pollution. We seem to have two choices: abandon all forms of technology and production or do all we can to create and use the most environmentally friendly approaches and sources of energy possible, balancing the need to create jobs and livable livelihoods for billions of people with care for the environment.

AI is a tool that can and is expected to provide tremendous benefits for billions, e.g., by creating new medicines. It also has the side-effect of using immense power with all the attending consequences. Our choices: 1) Don’t use it or 2) develop the lowest possible energy footprint possible. I believe the second option is the only viable one.

We can avoid, or at least mitigate, the pollution resulting from our technologies. More often than not, the “love of money” causes us to pollute and destroy (and I’ll add, make ugly factories, etc.) unnecessarily because it is cheaper. But even this has to be caveated because economics profoundly impacts job creation and living standards.

What never helps is virtue signaling and simplistic responses. As they say, “It’s complicated.”

It is indeed complex. If AI makes other processes more effective and efficient, then that may be a good thing. It’s difficult to calculate: I watch YouTube videos for pleasure - does that have more environmental impact than a paper book? Especially given I watch travel vloggers!

According to the article:

The carbon removal and carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS) technologies are not yet fully developed. Morgan Stanley suggests CCUS tech needs a $15 billion investment to bring them up to standard.

Given that’s just 10% of Apple’s cash on hand (for example) the problems we may create seem readily solvable. But is there a will (or commercial imperative) to do so?

One would like to think, naively, that the ethical imperative would be sufficient, but alas, it seldom is.

It appears that a few companies are working on the problem.

Microsoft deal would reopen Three Mile Island nuclear plant to power AI