Elections in India & ChatGPT experiments

Lots has been written about the recent elections in India that concluded earlier this week on Tuesday. I will not add much other than to state the facts and share my feeling:

1. The ruling party that was expected to win by a landslide got less than a majority; populist schemes weren’t rewarded by voters

2. The opposition that had been routed in the last elections came back strong, especially so in states which were the stronghold of the ruling party

3. The ruling party will get a mandate to form the government for the third term, but this time with strong coalition partners who will have a moderating influence, and with a stronger, bolder opposition

4. Given the results, the rumors of wide-spread election tampering were likely overblown

5. The exit polls got it all wrong!

My overall feeling is of joy & pride: India is still a functioning democracy, and the hundreds of millions of voters who participated in the elections returned a verdict to the ruling party to focus on development and growth rather than on populist measures, and with it disabusing the religious elite that called for a return to a mythical glorious past and the liberal elite that worried that India was being radicalized of the notion that their WhatsApp opinions & politics held any sway.

[Update: There’s an excellent Fareed Zakaria piece on the results of the elections, at https://x.com/FareedZakaria/status/1799864418118799363]

I’ve continued to use ChatGPT in the last week for many writing tasks. Here’s what I’ve discovered about using AI for writing:

• The actual writing of an article is still best done by a human. ChatGPT is better than OK, however the writing often feels flat and bland, and doesn’t have the roughness of a human voice or tone. This is despite uploading much of my own writing to ChatGPT and prompting it to write like me; in my editing of the articles I find that while the writing superficially sounds like me it doesn’t say what I would have or how I would have. Also, I found that re-writing an article that ChatGPT wrote took me almost as much time as it would have for me to write it.

• However, where ChatGPT excels is in helping create the scaffolding of what you want to write. It is great for writers block and for getting started. In going back and forth with ChatGPT you can create the skeleton that you can then flesh out in your own words.

• ChatGPT is also fantastic for brainstorming before writing. For some reason I was thinking of Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” last weekend, and then I had an idea: what about other ethics, like the Catholic Ethic, the Hindu Ethic, how did that influence the work ethic? From that flowed a number of questions: America was Protestant, was India defined by a Hindu ethic?, Was this only about Theology, or did Philosopy (like Epicureanism) or Political Economy (like Capitalism) have an impact on the work ethic? There were many more questions, and in spending an hour or so with ChatGPT brainstorming these, I was able to put together an interesting framework and then flesh out an article based on this initial idea: the article I wrote would have taken me weeks to do on my own, maybe days if I had brainstormed with a friend, and a few hours with ChatGPT. This is where the power of AI shone for me!

• ChatGPT is also brilliant at taking your existing writing and answering questions based on it. I uploaded the final draft of my book Failing Well (which is doing quite well on Amazon!) to ChatGPT, and made a Custom GPT called “Failing Well - The Product Management GPT”. With some training and prompting, it’s turned out to be quite good; it does a better than fair job of responding to product management questions, based on the content in the book as the first reference, and then refining this to answer more deep questions. This is super! Do try it out and let me know what you think…

Overall, I came away from my experiments with the thought that I would never ask ChatGPT to write an entire article for me independently (and then for me to edit the article). Rather, I would use ChatGPT to help me get started, to help me brainstorm, and then to help me check and edit the article; I could also later feed my article into ChatGPT to have it answer questions for me, or to extend my article.

ChatGPT is great for writing and writers. Many of us know the Steve Jobs quote of the computer being a bicycle for the mind; the optimist in me feels that Artificial Intelligence is a rocket for the mind: it doesn’t make us less human, in fact it makes us superhuman. I was reminded of the Prosthesis Mech suit from Exosapien Tech… this is what AI is for the brain.

1. I completed reading the book “The Conquest of Happiness” by Bertrand Russel this week. It’s brilliant: it was written in 1930, and each page is still relevant. This is a must read.

2. The article “Capex Opex Supercyles — The Death of SaaS and the Dawn of AI” was a fantastic post, and is required reading for everyone in tech and AI in my opinion.

3. The article “Inbox 10” by Boz was worth a read. This line stood out for me, “Your ability to be effective is a function of your ability to efficiently ingest the information around you.”

I put together a Spotify playlist — with the help of ChatGPT — on modern rock bands that are a worthy successor to Dire Straits and U2. I loved some of the recommendations, and have especially enjoyed listening to “The Nationals” and “Arcade Fire”. This is a cracker of a modern rock playlist!

Happy listening to this fantastic playlist, and until next week…