Hello! How are you?
(I moved to a new email address to match my blog URL, and from now on I’ll be sending you an email from this new address. Don’t forget to add it to your contacts when you receive the email.).
It’s been a while since I sent you an email. I’ve been debating the value of the Mediations newsletter in the age of AI. I have to admit that I’ve had a hard time integrating this newsletter with my blog since day one. When I wrote something, I debated its form: an email or an article. Every topic I wrote about could fit both. Eventually, I published everything on my blog, although I sent it as an email. Now, that’s changing. I cannot say I figured everything out now. But before I share, I want to explain why you should bother reading them, even with AI in your pocket.
We must start by asking one question: what makes something valuable? Why do we find things (like this email) valuable? Many confuse newsletters or content with being informative or entertaining. They often want new information, something they didn’t know. However, new information doesn’t make the information valuable. For example, I have five books on my desk right now. Here you received new information. Is it valuable? Definitely not. So, how can a writer (or creator) make information valuable? Short answer: they can’t.
The creator does not create value until the consumer community (e.g., readers like you) agrees that the content is valuable (I’m sorry to break it, but you cannot decide alone). The content must move the community a step forward or alter it. So, whatever I write won’t be valuable unless a portion of you agree that it’s influencing your life, or it makes you feel something (don’t underestimate feelings; they are the change itself), or it solves a problem you face (like a different perspective to improve your relationship with someone important to you). OR the information must come to you at the right time you need, which is “mission impossible” for a creator.
That’s where AI helps the best. It gives you personalised information no creator can match. The vast amount of information the AI has been trained on can be customised for your needs at a specific time. Yet, what AI cannot do is be a human, even when it reaches superintelligence. This begs the question: what does being human mean in this context? Answering this question will also unlock the value question.
Although the AI has the data, information, and calculation power, it is not sentimental. It can generate a story but cannot live through the change a piece of information creates. It cannot feel or live the information. Moreover, current LLM models use a probabilistic approach, selecting their next token (phrase) based on the highest probability, using data generated by the masses. A story a human writes is statistically insignificant compared to available content. Yet, each human is unique. That’s AI’s weakness.
Perspective and experience gained by living. As a person, I can live through situations, face challenges, and (perhaps with the help of AI), overcome them. When I tell you what I have been through, you also know it’s been lived; there is someone accountable for it (me). While AI can give you a similar story if you ask for it, it cannot give you the unique perspective gained from living. That’s the value of these emails (or similar content).
So, the promise I can make with these emails is the value you decide to assign, and an insignificant (hence unique) perspective I live and employ, delivered through stories from my life, sent to your inbox in private.
Yes, I’m moving these emails to a private setup. I will not cross-post emails to my blog or Substack (except for this last one, because I want to end the Substack publication with a note).
As you may have noticed, this email doesn’t have any fancy styling. That’s how we all write these personal emails. All future emails will be as if I’m writing to a friend or a government office. When you reply, your email will land in my inbox.
No more Substack, email open rate or link click rate tracking; I don’t care about them. What I count as success will be the replies I get to each email. I won’t publish these emails anywhere. Once you delete it, it will be gone. Whenever you want to unsubscribe, just reply to any email you receive and let me know that you no longer want to receive them; I’ll remove you from the list (FYI: I also removed you from the Substack publication, so you don’t have to clean up there.).
I’ll not promise a weekly or biweekly emails. I’ll try to send as often as possible but definitely not more than once a week (who has time to read more anyway?).
If it’s private, how can others read already sent emails? There is only one way: you forward the email to a person. If an email is valuable, I hope you forward to at least one person who you think will benefit as well (while reading, imagining someone who can benefit other than yourself is always a great way to give back to the community).
I hope you keep valuing things that are unique albeit being imperfect.
Until next time, Candost
”…
And be sure to use AI when working on your next
book or essay or piece of art or photography,
and then smile or even laugh at your own
cleverness when you see how good it is,
and how easy,
because who the hell has time
to work at something, to give time to craft, to
create with their own minds, to spend
years being mediocre. Why do that when
mastery, or at least competency
is so simple
only a good prompt away?
…”
— Please Use AI by Shawn Smucker
P.S.: I shared a project I created at work as a software engineering leader to leverage AI.
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