F2F #36: OpenAI not OpenEA

Two years ago, I resolved to spend 30-90 minutes per day forcing myself to use ChatGPT to build a habit. I forced myself to default to ChatGPT for every action or task I wanted to start.

That changed how I work and it is paying massive dividends, so now I am doing the same with voice mode.

You know I spend a lot talking to my AI, as I wrote on F2F #29: Talk to me, bAIbe or F2F #30: From blank canvas to product in 22 minutes. I force myself now to talk to ChatGPT when walking between meetings about just anything, just to build the habit.

In fact, more often than not, I get this:

The thing I wanted to write about today is that I've tried to create a personal/executive assistant using ChatGPT. On paper, you could do it:

• It has access to your Apple Notes, to add extra context.
• It reads images, so you can screenshot stuff then ingest it into ChatGPT.
• You can chat in real time with it.
• You can set reminders.
• It formats unstructured data (mostly braindumps).
• It searches the interwebs.
• Etc.

In fact, what I've been doing, it is:

• At the beginning of the week, provide it with a screenshot of my calendar.
• First thing in the morning "run me through my day".
  • It asks for changes in my calendar and other things I might want to do during the day.
  • Pending tasks from yesterday.
• Set reminders.

Easy, right?

So, theoretically, you've got the world's smartest person in your pocket. Surely it can perform this role flawlessly or close to it, right?

Right?

WRONG.

I've been trying to use ChatGPT's Advanced Voice mode to behave like my assistant every day for almost two months and the experience is deeply frustrating at best. It is well far from being usable for this specific use case:

• Connection breaks when it picks up too much background noise.
  • Upon reconnecting, sometimes it goes back to the beginning of the conversation.
• Advanced Voice Mode defaults to reading out loud everything it generates, so when it comes to listicles and long-ass answers, it's hard to keep focus. No one remembers a list of ten things. I lose focus mid-answer.
• You have to always use the same thread.
  • Even though it claims to be able to navigate the other threads, for this particular scenario it doesn't.
• The reminders go nowhere.
• The "run me through the day" instruction makes up stuff if you have no pending tasks, with generic fluff like "reconnect with your team", "sync with the marketing guy" and the like.

So, we'll have to wait a bit more to be able to use ChatGPT as a personal or executive assistant.