AI Usage

AI is in the news all the time now. Every day we read & hear about new companies, tools, uses, and problems to be solved with them. However, in my world, nobody really seems to be talking about them much. Since I’m a lone wolf right now building out Drink•Eat•Walk, this makes it hard for me to get a feel for how popular AIs are in people’s work live, as well as in their everyday personal lives.

So a standard question I now try to ask in conversations is “are you using AI at all?” The answer I pretty much get every time is “Nope, but I probably should be” or “Nah, I like doing stuff myself”. I actually now use AIs pretty much every day, and when I explain to folks how I use them, I can see a little flicker in their eyes as they finally get a little more grip of how they can be useful for folks like us now.

So, this post is about what I detail in those conversations. If nothing else, it’ll provide a life bookmark for me so I can look back later and see how little I used something that I truly believe is going to take over everything we do (or, will no longer do…).

As I wrote about before, I’m researching & writing stories for my Drink•Eat•Walk tours. This involves reading lots of books, but also articles & blog/social posts, as well as watching videos & listening to podcasts. As I’m consuming each, I take lots of notes and plop them into a Notion document dedicated to one of those stories. This leaves me with a ton of great source material, factoids, and anecdotes, but it’s in a giant, unorganized document.

I then need to do two things with this information jungle*:

1. Create a comprehensive, but less-than-five-minute, story that I can tell at one of the restaurant stops, eg. “Salvadorans in DC”
2. Give the story an interesting kickoff that’s a relatable, thematic narrative for the story & stop, eg. “You’re eating a delicious papusa right now because of a civil war in the 1980’s”

I very specifically don’t use any AI for #2. Coming up with that is a feel I start to get while doing all the research, and the fun reward for the all the work I’ve put into it.

It’s with #1 that I bring the AI in, as I usually beging the writing process by complaining in my head “how the F do I organize all this F’ing info into a 500 word story‽” So, using different words, that’s kinda what I ask ChatGPT, eg. “What is the history of Salvadorans in DC?”

If you’ve never used an AI tool, this is the moment of magic. Instantly, line-by-line, it starts spitting out a perfectly organized, bulleted, and detailed narrative of what you’ve asked for. The surprise quickly dissipates, though, as you start to think “why did I even do all that research?”

This is where that #2 becomes even more important, where the human skills take over, and, honestly, where all the fun is. See, what the AI produces is great, but it’s not the story I want to tell, nor does it include all the info, factoids, and anecdotes that I’ve gathered and want to use. So begins hours & days of inserting, deleting, editing, overwriting, and crafting, using the shit ton of info I’ve gathered.

In addition, the AI is perfect for filling in the research gaps you uncover as you’re writing — you can pepper it with very, very specific follow up questions, eg. “Why did the earthquake in El Salvador in 1991 enable Salvadorans to work in DC” or “What is the history of El Tamarindo in DC”. This all goes on & on until I can produce something that is distinctly Tim, and that he can easily tell over Pilseners & fried cheese.

I’ve never gathered the stats, but my guess is that by the end, less than 10% of what the AI produced makes it into my final story. Creating that final story is so hard, but starting it is so much easier because you don’t have to start with either an empty page or an infinite page.

So, that’s how I’m currently using AI. I also somewhat use it to create images (Meta AI is great for this), but it’s as a research assistant that it really shines for me. I do the things I like and/or am good at, and it does the things I don’t like and/or am not good at.

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*AIs are also great thesauruses. In this case, I asked ChatGPT

What’s a term for a giant, unorganized document of facts and dates and stories that I need to distill down into a short, comprehensive story

and it generated

Sounds like you’ve got a “raw history dump” or a “fact avalanche” on your hands!

Here are some other fun (and slightly optimistic) ways to describe it:

• “Information jungle” – Dense, wild, but full of discoveries.

• “Narrative soup” – A mix of ingredients waiting to be shaped into a dish.

• “Chronological sprawl” – A history that’s spread out and needs refining.

• “Untamed archive” – A collection of facts that needs organization.

• “Story compost” – A messy pile that will eventually grow into something useful.

If you want something classic and a bit literary:

• “A historian’s labyrinth” – Twisty, complex, but full of treasures.

• “A mosaic in pieces” – Waiting to be arranged into a full picture.