The Antidote To AI Shiny Object Syndrome

Tool Chasers Beware

Author

AI Playbooks
February 21, 2023

AI has captured the imaginations of many people who are becoming increasingly obsessed with tracking the latest and greatest AI tools.

If you’re one of them, here’s a resource dump for you:

8 AI directories:

 4 Industry Maps:

But before your thumbs start tapping those links, a word of caution…

Lest Ye Become An AI Tool Chaser

There is a very clear tendency for people to run after all the new tools emerging in the AI space, falling prey to the temptation of shiny object syndrome. This obsession with constantly exploring new AI tools without ever actually using them to get results can be a drain on both time and energy, ultimately leading to disappointment and disillusionment.

At the heart of this problem is the rush of excitement that comes with the discovery of a new AI tool. The thrill of finding something that promises to make our work easier, faster, or more accurate can be almost addictive.

But our curiosity can turn into a liability if we spend countless hours exploring tools without producing any tangible results. This is the plight of the AI Tool Chaser.

This kind of person becomes paralyzed by the constant stream of new tools and technologies that are being developed as they constantly switch their focus from one tool to the next without ever fully leveraging the capabilities of any of them.

To avoid falling into this form of shiny object syndrome, it's essential to keep our focus on results. Rather than getting caught up in the thrill of exploration, we should approach new tools with a specific goal in mind, such as automating a particular workflow.

By focusing on a specific outcome (like finding social media clips from long form content), we can quickly assess whether a new tool is worth pursuing. If it doesn't align with our objectives or requires a significant investment of energy, we can move on to other options without getting bogged down in the exploration phase.

In the end, the most successful users of AI will be those who can balance the thrill of discovery with the discipline of focused experimentation.

You can also get a leg up by carefully curating your AI media environment. By following people who are already battle-testing these tools (like us) you can skip the experimentation phase and instead borrow proven step-by-step processes.

Keep your eyes open for our results-focused walkthrough tutorials coming in the weeks and months ahead. These playbooks will help business owners get the most out of AI without getting bogged down in the endless chase for the next shiny tool.

👑 Crowned Creator

In this section, we'll be chronicling the stories of people who are making an impact and doing cool sh*t in the world of AI. We aspire to bring you the most valuable insights and ideas from these creative minds, inspiring you to take your own AI journey to new heights.

This week we’re crowning Andrew Gao AI royalty for his innovative and immensely useful creations. Andrew is a student a Stanford studying CS and the founder of The Helyx Initiative. Here's what Andrew has been up to:

 🎣 ShipSense

Alongside Soham Govande, Molly, and Sayak Maity, Andrew created Shipsense which is a GIS portal to monitor overfishing hotspots and illegal fishing operations around the world, using an AI vision model to detect ships from space. They used stable diffusion and satellite data to build this. Check out their journey of building ShipSense here.

Andrew and his team won a grand prize at the Stanford hackathon, and placed 1st in sustainability from Meta and Replit. Congrats, Andrew!

👩‍🎓 Highlighting fellow Stanford student projects

Check out this ever-growing thread of AI projects created by Stanford students. We especially like this AI-based college admissions consultant, and Symbiotic, a ChatGPT for your docs.

Simply upload your resume, paste the job description, and let AI work its magic!

🔗 Links From The Edge

New tools and fresh ideas from the frontier of AI-powered businesses:

🎬 Wrap Up

Michael Scott famously said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

But to take a shot you need to skate where the puck is going, not where the puck already is. In the coming weeks we’re going to detail various “AI Playmakers”, these are the archetypal forces that different people and organizations will embody as the AI landscape develops.

In essence, we’re going to identify the players on the field so we can better predict how this game will unfold and what playbooks we need to win in the AI arena.