Why am I using it? Why am I using this? What is it going to help me do? And if if the answer is it's going to save me time I might be okay with it, but then I need to unpack how is it saving you time. If it's just saving you time and I don't have to learn a whole bunch of other stuff. And I would say that's actually bad or bad or bad word, but it's might not be the best use of the tool because the reason why I say that is I know we all have busy lives. I know we all want to jam as much as possible into our lives. But what we actually always sacrifice
is the opportunity to learn. Welcome to The Circuit Breaker Podcast where we challenge the status quo of innovation and new product development. We'll talk about tools and skills and methodologies used to build better products and make you better consumer. I'm Bob Moesta and I'm the co-founder of the reWired group and I'm one of your co-hosts and we're joined by Greg Engle who is my co-founder and the Chief Bob interpreter. Join us now as we trip the circuit and give you time
to reset reorganize and recharge your brain to build better products. Hey Bob. Hey Greg what's up man. So today we're going to talk about something that I'm going to screw the name up a bunch of times. So I was just going to forgive me, but we're going to talk about chat GPT. Oh my favorite. And the reason why we're going to talk usually about everything. So I'm not sure dude, I guess everything's your favorite. Everything I like I just like talk about your favorite. No.
What are you hearing about or what's it about. So that's cool. But really the reason why we're talking about it is because I'm not a big social media guy but the last couple of times I went on LinkedIn or went on Twitter. People have either tweeted at you or posted to you or even just to me about how they've used chat GPT to do jobs interviews or
summarize a book or things like that and it kind of pains me a bit when I see that or hear that because I'm afraid that we're actually outsourcing thinking. Yes. That's my biggest fear with it. I think it's a really good search tool and maybe summarizing tool but it's not.
It doesn't give the subtleties of what the meanings are. And so it tends to create in my opinion, Pavel that higher level stuff of like it's got to be easy and fun and blah blah blah. And you're like okay, what does that mean. And so there's no context. And so I think the other thing is that they can do an interview and it can help summarize interview but it's the thinking between the interviews that are way more important.
Are you on channel because it can't really summarize a true Jouzi on interview because it's just going to give you the words. It's not going to give you the intent because it can't actually see the intent. Yes. That's the way the algorithm works is is looking at the next highest probability of a word. So it doesn't actually have logic. It's based on kind of the data that it has at the time and looks at it. And so.
It's again, it's a summary tool. I think if anything, but it's not necessarily it's not it doesn't get to what we would consider the essence of the job or the detail and the unpacking of it. And what I'm afraid of when it's a summary tool, especially using it in a jobs done interview is we're going to summarize to those relief systems that everybody already has actually actually is going to force it more towards the supply side than the demand side because that's what's out there.
Right. So I'm afraid that by putting it through there and I understand why people want to put it through there because they think it's helping with analysis because it's counting the words it's doing those types of things. The problem is that's not really the analysis the analysis is is trying to figure out what were the intense of people in the patterns and then what what context and things were happening and a lot of times people don't give you the whole context they give you clues.
And that's where you say the thinking right because that's the thinking of how do we now put together this puzzle that we don't have the box to see what it looks like. And we're trying to put together this puzzle of this interview without the box without the instructions. And that's what the true thinking of jobs we've done is is that trying to put together those puzzle pieces.
It's also the human the human part of all this right. And so what happens is is it's like what we used to call on 10 years ago what we call jobs washing right where people would sit around in a conference room and
kind of guess what the jobs would be and you know kind of hypotheses but hypothesize what it was but never go talk to anybody it's the it's the same problem is that you can take interviews we've done or interviews other people have done and kind of put into chat GPT but it doesn't actually help you have that understanding it just actually builds the summer.
Well, and I would say the again the bad summary because it's just counting words or it might even change a word it might change the word from easy to pleasant to do and it's like OK, those are totally different things well it depends on the intent the context wrapped around how they set it and so I'll send their assuming in some cases they assume like a like a source that the language is very similar but in some cases it's very very different right.
The thing is this is I want to make sure we understand like like for doing these for doing jobs interview it's more about discovery and understanding the subtleties and so to be honest it's like it might be a way to summer but like it's a great tool to prototype to learn right and other cases so like I just want to make sure what in the terms of jobs I would say it's a dangerous thing because at some point if you don't really have a good understanding of what the jobs are and and you're you don't actually have that that the notion of the world.
The notion of intent and the summary in the subtleties behind it the chapter GG GPD can come back with what what seems like a good job a clear job but when you actually unpack it it's not clear because you don't have the detail behind it and what people meant right and and you know to your point we're not trying to poo poo it we're not saying that it shouldn't exist as our saying at all we're saying is understand and this is where us humans have to understand how to use something.
How to use something how to use a tool just like you have to understand how to use jobs we don't write chat be GPD see is a tool and we have to know how to use it and I've heard some schools that I think have a really good take on it which is fine go ahead and use it as the starter and see what other people have written and and give it give it give you a starting point but then add your original thought to it because that's what we're trying to do is humans add original thought if we're just going to regurgitate stuff for you to do that.
If we're regurgitate stuff then we stop thinking and if we stop thinking we stop humanity so that's what scares me about it is those types of things and then the other thing it scares me about it as I saw somebody put a book through it right and said summarize the book for me at some level and I'm like okay that's dangerous only because what I know when you write a book and we went through it a bit is we have an intent the customer or the person reading the book doesn't have our intent.
They have different they have different they have different jobs we done they want out of a book right so you already have a distortion of what is going to happen right because we have an intent that we're writing the book for they have an intent that they will how they want to receive the book so there's already disconnect there's already a possibility of missing misalignment but now you add another layer of distilling of this this thing going out and saying okay if this is the summary of the book let me change this word.
Let me change this word from prototyping to experimentation or let me change this word from liking to something. Exactly. It would be or another word pleasant and now you've actually distorted even more from our view of the author right so now it's even more distorted so if you're one or two percent off at the beginning now you can be five or 10% off because it might not even match what you're trying to get out of it.
This is this is where I the way I talk about that is is you know they're getting more and more efficient but less and less effective right it's a point like who give me a summary of the book so I don't have to read the book and so here's the summary okay I got the gist of it I can move on and again I think there's intent behind it and so.
Again I think chap GPT can be a useful tool to help like with starting points with prototyping with having you know contrast to create meaning some different things around it but at some point you have to understand the content that you're actually asking to summarize in order to take it to the next level.
I think a lot people ask themselves a question when they go to use it is why am I using it why am I using this what is it going to help me do and if if the answer is it's going to save me time I might be okay with it but I need to unpack what is how is it saving you time is just saving you time and I don't have to learn a whole bunch of other stuff and I would say that's actually bad or bad so bad word but it's might not be the best use of the tool because the reason why I say that is I know we all have busy lives I know we all want to jam as much
as possible into our lives but what we actually always sacrifice is the opportunity to learn or go deeper yeah and learning is staggered in deepness right because there's there's surface learning our theory learning there's knowledge and then there's depth so what I'm afraid of is is everything becomes cliff notes and then do we actually really understand what they meant and then I can you know you could talk to clay struggle towards.
I'm sure towards the end of his life of how people are taking disruption theory and distorting it yeah to fit a context that was not what he was trying to say and even I've distorted what he says right because my take on it is. At the basic principle what he was trying to get done was say look sometimes even when you're a business leader you make very rational decisions.
You make the right decision for the moment time but you might not make the right decision for the long term and you have to start looking at both and you understand and that's my take of what he did but that's not really what is take was so I've distorted as well. To fit my narrative or to fit my thing so we all know what happens but can we. I acknowledge it happens I acknowledge it and by acknowledging it I can also read his stuff and say okay what else was he trying to get across.
And I think people use the word just you know describe disruption is all kinds of different thing yeah any new thing was just. Reception was disruption right and that's not what he was saying. He was saying disrupt well you could probably say better yeah the whole premise was that that the incumbents the people who are leading a market basically can be disrupted by somebody who is.
At the lower end of the market and that most incumbents would look at and laugh at because at some point they're not as good as the incumbent but at the end of the day they're serving the underserved and they're actually bringing a new technology. To bear to literally get to scale that ends up you know basically killing the incumbent right and so is very very detailed rigorous work around kind of studying kind of how.
The smartest and best leaders can kind of be met miss a line because they're still worried about short term profits and not actually looking at the underserved right so that that's what I mean by it so if I put his disruption three book in through this thing if I don't know what will come up with.
But it's probably not his intent well I think part of this is to it to realize it's a tool that needs respect and that you need to realize it's only going to give you so much it's only going to regurgitate what's there.
It's not going to help you actually with new thought right and so that's why again I go you know even though we've done let's say interviews on multiple categories in multiple ways like we learn something new every single time and and we hone refined and pay back that onion and so to me. The warning label is look this might help you get to a certain point but ultimately you have to get into the details to get to the next level.
The thing that I really like about chat GPT though is the fact is it I think we're going to notice a flip and maybe we already have but I feel like there's a flip from knowing the answers to asking better questions and so people are asking chat be to GPT way better questions do you think I think they're thinking harder about the questions and so when you look at kind of how it's way better than search right well I think it does things better than search for a lot of things I think like.
I know we had talked in the office with a couple people that are closer to the field than we are and they're like look if I have a technical question like how to fix acts they go to that because it does search better yeah right that's insane so for those types of things I think it does well and I think what you're saying is for original thought or for understanding things it might it might search up some stuff but then you have to go do work so I actually doing more work or less work by doing this and that's the question I have for a lot of it right we think we're sort of.
We're cutting it but are we actually creating more work for exactly exactly and I think that this gets back to kind of our overall kind of approach and kind of the mind that if we've had in the last couple years which is like this is about thinking development is about thinking it's about thinking differently right and it's about actually framing things from different perspectives and being able to connect dots and do those kind of things I think that chat GPT might be able to help summarize but it's not going to actually connect those dots right and so this is where there's the.
That's where I think we have to be very careful that it's not going to give us the answer is going to give us a better summary of the data that we have to still integrate we still have to do the work that's in the question to me if you use it for like jobs you don't and stuff is it summarizes but then does it actually bring you a degree further from what the person was actually trying to say and that's my fear with that I saw somebody I saw somebody take the the you know an interview we did and break it down into its components of a lot of work and I think it's not going to be a very good thing to do it.
And interview we did and break it down into its components of a push a pull and anxiety and have it and you know here's the statement here's what it is but it's like it's still missing all the details of what they meant by it and so this is the and this is the debrief part afterwards and so to me it's the it's the arguing it's the it's the clarifying it's the unpacking that happens afterwards and so the raw data itself sometimes is is misleading because they use a word over and over and over again and it seems like okay this is a big word but it's like it now has eight different definitions as opposed to the
one it depending whether you're talking about being a push or you're talking about being a pull right to the different definitions exactly exactly it's exactly it's exactly it's so this is where it's it's I think being able to to sense those things is important but I think it's more of that is decided in the debrief then it is in the interview because the interview is just a lot of pieces of data and then ultimately we're we're actually can I connecting those dots to say what really was pushing them and pulling them etc well I think it's in both because you have to have the right questions
and the right thing to get to it when we're going to do a podcast more on that I mean yeah I think I think what we're saying is I mean to kind of summarize look it's a good tool no one's saying throw it away no one's saying don't ever use it we're saying make sure you're asking your questions
and I think that's to your point of you think they're people are doing better questions which I don't know if they are not but stop and ask yourself a question why am I putting in here yeah what is it going to help me do what progress
I'm trying to make my putting in here and what what the limitations of what I'm going to get from and the easy answer for people is a save time or why are you trying to save time what is it you're trying to save time with because if you have to write a column or a blog and you want to get an idea
yeah I think that saves you time because that saves you research time well and if if you say hey it's going to save me time because I don't have to do the work and I don't have to think well then I think you're doing something I think you have to rethink that
you're going to be in trouble so that that's what we that's all we're saying is take the time to actually figure out why you're doing it what's going on I mean and I could tell a story like I'm on passed away recently and I had to write the the
the obituary right and I don't know how to write obituary right and I I kept thinking should I put it in there and have it help me write it and the struggle there was yeah it would help me write it but does it actually take away from my relationship with my mom
right because writing it is the remembering things and doing to do that stuff so was that the right time to use it or not and I decided it wasn't for some people it might be but that's an individual thought process you have to actually think about and I think a lot of times what we do is we see a new shiny tool and we try to shape everything into it yeah without thinking of what it's going to do for us or or what it's going to take away from us because in my case it
would it might take something away from me right so that's what I want people to just stop and think about of why you're doing it and and I get people are just playing right now I get it so I mean I get why people put our interviews to it I get why people are trying to use it for a
analysis because you got to see if it works I get it but don't think it works just because it spits out an answer yeah that's right you need to also think about what it really did or didn't do for you and the hard part is that what you're getting back
especially if you're not an expert in it you don't know if it's any good and so this is where all of a sudden it's it's it's like it might be good at some superficial level but when you start to unpack to go develop something I'm not sure that I would actually build based on what Che at GPT tells me to build and I always try to figure out like we laugh a lot because you know we we uh we just laugh a lot we work hard but we also have
more flexibility than most people right so when we're working we're working very hard and when we're off we get to do things we get to think and you always talk about the thinking part of it and what I'm afraid of is people because they're drive of saving time because they're drive of
uh trying to jam as much possible and they're actually short cutting the thinking time and that's that's not all I do I think it's dangerous I think it's bad for the person I think it's bad for for a lot of reasons I think in the end it's it's that it's the my being the myopic of being more and more
efficient that we're less and less effective and that's where we lose sight of like oh I can do this faster and faster faster but now I can't change it's like so I look at schools and schools are so efficient that they actually can't change and so there's no room to do any innovation there's room no room to think about anything different and so when it does it's like like innovation is a luxury and because they're not thinking they're just executing you know time after
time after time and the reality is like they need time to think so I think this this week that the thing where we're asking people to do is is just a step back every anytime they use a new tool be it chat GPT or not why are you using what is it doing for you
and also I want to challenge people to carve out some time in their works schedule to think that's that's I think the bigger the biggest thing we're really trying to get people to understand is how do we give you tools and frameworks to think and then I mean we just started a newsletter and the newsletter is again similar to the podcast is just trying to cause you to take them in and take a step back and think about what you're doing why you're doing it and
using a framework or two to help you kind of go a little bit deeper and a little bit better so as always thanks for listening and hope to see you guys next drop see ya thanks for listening to the circuit breaker podcast if you haven't already please subscribe so you won't miss an episode if you know somebody who stuck on the innovation treadmill please share it if you'd like to learn more information visit us at theverywiregroup.com to find out how we work how we can help
some resources some books some software join us next time as we trip the circuit breaker to help you recharge reenergize and refocus your new product development