How much I'm paying for AI productivity software (and the future of AI use)

By jacquesthibs @ 2024-10-11T17:11 (+28)

This is a linkpost to https://jacquesthibodeau.com/how-much-im-paying-for-ai-productivity-software/

This is a crosspost, probably from LessWrong. Try viewing it there.

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AxellePB 🔹 @ 2024-10-13T12:14 (+4)

Super interesting to read this list. I didn't know half of the tools you mention. I work as a journalist, and although I sense the potential of using AI in my work, so far I've limited myself to some minor uses of ChatGPT. I think applying gwern's advice, and reflecting carefully on the valuable tasks an hypothetical outsourced human could perform for me, will help me in this area. So thanks for sharing!

jacquesthibs @ 2024-10-13T14:45 (+2)

Yeah, I think most of the gains we've gotten from AI have been in coding and learning. Many of the big promises have yet to be met; definitely still a struggle to get it to work well for writing (in the style we'd want it to write) or getting AI agents to work well, so it limits the possible useful application.

Mckiev 🔸 @ 2024-10-16T18:11 (+2)

I use many of the same subscriptions, but also monica (refferal link), only for it's ui basically: when highlighting the text on a webpage you can press "explain" among other options, and it elaborates on a term/phrase/sentence, I didn't feel like I understood enough. As with perplexity you can customize which model to use under the hood

Aayush Kucheria @ 2024-10-16T20:18 (+1)

A few AI tools I frequently use that weren't mentioned here are:

CB🔸 @ 2024-10-14T13:35 (+1)

Interesting insights here. 

Do you think the superwhisper tool is worth it for the ability to write more quickly ? How much time do you think this saves you ? I am not interested in coding but I am interested in stuff that would speed up writing, communication, things like that.

jacquesthibs @ 2024-10-14T14:25 (+3)

I’m still getting the hang of it, but primarily have been using it when I want to brainstorm some project ideas that I can later pass off to an LLM for context on what I’m working on or when I want to reflect on a previous meeting I had. Will probably turn it on about ~1 time per week while I’m walking to work and ramble about a project in case I think of something good. (I also sometimes use it to explain the project spec or small adjustments I want my AI coding assistant to do.)

Sometimes I’ll use the Advanced Voice Mode or normal voice mode from ChatGPT for this instead. For example, I used it to practice for an interview after passing off a lot of the context to the model (my CV, the org, etc). I used this to just blurt out all the thoughts I have in my head in a question-answer format and then asked the AI for feedback on my answers and asked it to give a summary of the conversation (like a cheat sheet to remind myself what I want to talk about).

CB🔸 @ 2024-10-18T15:31 (+1)

I tried to acquire superwhisper - but it's only available on mac and iphone, so in the end I couldn't use it (I'll look into other speech to text translators)

jacquesthibs @ 2024-10-18T16:40 (+3)

Yeah, apologies; I thought I had noted that, but I only mentioned the iOS app. There are a few that exist, but I think the ones I've seen are only Mac-compatible at the moment, unfortunately. There has to be a Windows or Linux one...

CB🔸 @ 2024-10-14T15:06 (+1)

Ok, interesting. Do you think that if i were to use it, I would be able to win some significant time by using it to write reports, or social media posts, or even comment on the EA Forum ?

SummaryBot @ 2024-10-11T18:33 (+1)

Executive summary: The author, an AI alignment researcher, details their current AI productivity tool usage costing ~$157/month, and explores why it's challenging to effectively spend more on AI tools despite their potential to drastically increase productivity.

Key points:

  1. The author uses various AI tools including Superwhisper, Cursor Pro, Claude.ai, ChatGPT, and others, totaling about $157/month.
  2. Despite being an AI researcher, the author finds it difficult to identify ways to spend $1000+/month on AI tools for productivity gains.
  3. The challenge in leveraging AI stems partly from people's inexperience in effectively utilizing intelligence and automation in their workflows.
  4. Current organizational structures and workflows are often not optimized for AI integration, limiting its immediate impact.
  5. The author suggests experimenting with hiring human assistants to identify tasks that could potentially be delegated to AI.
  6. There's an expectation that AI will lead to significant productivity boosts in the coming years, with some companies potentially gaining a competitive edge through internal AI automation.

 

 

This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.

Jonas Hallgren @ 2024-10-11T18:15 (+1)

Thanks Jacques! I was looking for an upgrade to some of my LLM tools. I was looking for some IDEs and I'll check that out.

The only tip I've got is using reclaim.ai instead of calendly for automatic meeting scheduling, it slaps.

Neel Nanda @ 2024-10-11T19:22 (+2)

What does reclaim give you? I've never heard of it, and the website is fairly uninformative

Jonas Hallgren @ 2024-10-21T14:55 (+3)

Sorry for not noticing the comment earlier! 

Here's the Claude distillation based on my reasoning on why to use it:

Reclaim is useful because it lets you assign different priorities to tasks and meetings, automatically scheduling recurring meetings to fit your existing commitments while protecting time for important activities. 

For example, you can set exercising three times per week as a priority 3 task, which will override priority 2 meetings, ensuring those exercise timeblocks can't be scheduled over. It also automatically books recurrent meetings so they fit into your existing schedule, like for team members or mentors/mentees. 

This significantly reduces the time and effort spent on scheduling, as you can easily add new commitments without overlapping more important tasks. The main advantage is the ability to set varying priorities for different tasks, which streamlines the process of planning weekly and monthly calls, resulting in almost no overhead for meeting planning and making it simple to accommodate additional commitments without conflicting with higher-priority tasks..

OscarD🔸 @ 2024-10-17T08:55 (+2)

The main thing I find reclaim useful for (though I only use the free version) is syncing all my different calendars, in such a way that only some information is shared, e.g. I want my personal calendar events to show up as not bookable in my work calendar, but without people being able to see what my personal calendar events are. This is what my work calendar looks like, where the orange events are automatically imported from my personal calendar.

Maybe there are other better ways to do this too though.