Maharashtra becomes magical in the monsoons. Last weekend we did a small walk up the Vetal Tekdi hill in Pune. This picture (from the Chaturshringi end of Vetal Tekdi hill) overlooks the institutional areas of NCL, IISER, IITM etc. Zoom in and check it out. Gorgeous stuff.

And now, on to the newsletter.

Welcome to the eighty-fourth edition of '3-2-1 by Story Rules'.

A newsletter recommending good examples of storytelling across:

3 tweets
2 articles, and
1 long-form content piece

Let's dive in.

𝕏 3 Tweets of the week

This is nuts. He created an entire podcast series from existing public information - in 2 hours!

I actually heard part of one of the episodes (Bronze Age collapse). It's pretty decent for something that's AI-generated in 2 hours. Gives a wannabe Radiolab vibe. It does sound over the top, but c'mon. This is a machine-generated conversation from a Wikipedia page. Crazy.

I love maps. I love relief maps even more. And then Raj Bhagat comes up with this. Beauty.

Look at the height on that Ganga-origin graph.

(Check out the whole tweet-thread for an insightful analysis on why there are floods in the Vijaywada region).

Nice line - you have to be able to 'afford' unemployment - which is why the unemployment rate is higher among the richer income segments.

Good to see that the rate has reduced over the last 5 years.

📄 2 Articles of the week

a. 'What's your writing process?' by Ann Handley

The ever-readable Ann Handley on how to approach writing in the AI age. First up, she recognises that having your own voice is important:

Countless pundits and prophets remind you that you need to keep the HUMANS in AI. That your content needs your body and soul, heartbeat and hoofprints to make it your own.

That it needs to come only from you—your brand, your point of view, your voice yadda yadda yadda.

Even the extremely pro-AI group—those Really On Board with Outstanding Tech (the ROBOTs)—will tell you that. Humans matter, the ROBOTs say. Be the real-real.

Should we use AI for our first drafts? Ann doesn't think so (and I agree with her):

Why write a first draft if AI can do it for us? It’s so much easier. And faster. It’s magical! Add prompt and stir vigorously… and voilà!

It’s birthed a fully formed blog post right there on the hot Wordpress!!!

All ready for us to mAkEhuM@n.

Not a big deal when you’re writing an SEO snippet. Or a term sheet. But over time…? A very big deal.

We have it backwards.

The first draft is the thinking draft. That's where you need to be fully present. On board. Just you and your glorious ideas.

Otherwise, you undermine yourself. You shortchange your growth and creativity. You put the ROBOTs first. You put yourself second.

I just LOVED the line - "the first draft is the thinking draft". I'm going to shamelessly steal it, when someone asks me how to use AI for writing.

She reports the results of a study which surveyed marketers in terms of how often they wrote (anything) on their own:

The correlation between writing daily and strong results is real:

- 23% of marketing writers who write daily report "strong results."

- 16% of marketing writers who don't write daily report "strong results."

In other words, those of us who write every day are 44% more likely to report strong results with our writing.

b. 'Karvi and the Spaniard: A mysterious flower, and the man who tried to understand it' by Abhinav Chandrachud

I spoke about the magical Maharashtra monsoon earlier in this mail. This lovely article speaks about the 'karvi', a beautiful purple-hued flower which blooms only once in eight years. Guess what, this year it's back.

Source: Jayesh Patil, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The forest is awash with the rich, purple hue of the elusive Karvi flower, which blooms only once in eight years. Stare at this mesmerizing sea of purple flowers, and you will think back to what you were doing eight years ago when they last bloomed, and wonder what life has in store for you eight years from now at the next flowering.

I loved the last line above - what a wistful way to contemplate the beauty of nature.

The piece speaks about a Spanish-Indian botanist named Rev. Hermenegild Santapau who undertook a lot of research on this flower. Despite his best efforts though, he could not find out why the plant follows this unique flowering cycle:

Santapau was perplexed by this uncanny plant and the family to which it belonged. Why do Karvi and other Strobilanthes plants flower “after so many years of vegetative growth”, he asked himself. Further, what caused them to flower at “one and the same time”? “I have been trying to find an answer to these questions,” he candidly admitted to his readers in the pages of the BNHS journal he edited, “but regretfully I have to say that up to the present there is no satisfactory answer.”

If any readers know the reason, please do share!

🎧 1 long-form listen of the week

a. 'How a Top Podcaster Rides the AI Wave - Ep. 28 with Nathaniel Whittemore' on the 'AI & I' podcast with Dan Shipper

Does it seem like too many of my recent editions are AI focused? Ah well, don't blame me, blame the rapid pace of developments in the space!

I found this conversation insightful given it features two leading users of AI in writing and creation in general - Dan Shipper (CEO of Every, a leading newsletter/publication focused on developments and creator tools in the AI space) and Nathaniel Whittlemore (the host of 'The AI Daily Brief', aa top-ranked AI podcast).

Nathaniel believes that there is a lot of behind-the-scenes experimentation going on with AI:

I think that we're still so at the beginning of you know we're at a stage in AI's development where we're basically asking everyone to go figure out how to reinvent their own workflows and that's so not how things work in the real world. In the real world the way that things work is that there is some very small number of people who are the sort of super creative experimenters and tinkerers who spend hours and hours and hours figuring these things out just because they actually like the joy of tinkering and then they share what works. And I think that part of why this isn't happening right now is that so many people are not sharing what they've figured out that they're doing.

And a big part of why it is behind-the-scenes is that employees may not be disclosing to their companies what they are doing:

...a big part of that is actually policy in the corporate sector right. So there was a study that recently came out Microsoft and Linkedin that found 75% of knowledge workers are using AI at work but 78% of them are not disclosing it, they're not talking about it. They're basically smuggling AI into work because they don't want to be... told that they're not allowed to do it anymore.

Nathaniel points out an interesting nuance - ChatGPT (for writing) is being used more by folks who are not into writing as a core skill:

...if someone is primarily a writer or a primary part of their role is writing, they actually I think tend to use these tools less than someone who is not primarily a writer. But still everyone has to do a meaningful amount of writing as part of their sort of you know, (jobs) especially knowledge worker type jobs. And I think a lot of where the benefit is is actually now it's for people who that (writing) was like nails on a chalkboard for before and they could make it faster, it's better. (But) it's not going to replace someone who's a great writer. I mean you guys (Every) write amazing essays, like how many of your people are using ChatGPT to rewrite those things... I would bet zero. Maybe they're using it for brainstorming or something else but you know it's just different

I would agree with Nat. For me writing is a core thing, and something I enjoy doing. I cannot think of using ChatGPT or other tools to generate first drafts (yikes) or give me ideas. I might use it to tighten a sentence or two. But I find that 'non-writers' around me are using this tool much more frequently.

So unlike other tech tools which tend to 'make the rich richer', I see Gen AI tools like ChatGPT being great 'equalisers'. They are levelling the playing field for folks who are not naturally inclined towards writing or for whom, English is not a first language.

AI does a great job in bringing something from poor quality to average or above average. It may not be able to do an authentic, high-quality piece though... For that the writer's own voice has to come through (as Ann mentions in the earlier piece).

Dan mentions an interesting analogy for ChatGPT - Excel:

...the best analog for AI in general and ChatGPT is in terms of like the history of software I think a really good analog is Excel. And in the same the the sort of overlap is Excel is like really easy to get started anyone can anyone can start by just like filling in a Cell but you can do things of almost unlimited complexity with it. It just like it progressively reveals its complexity you can use it at any level. And it I think it taught people a new paradigm for how to think about using computers like when it came out like 30 years ago and what's interesting is that EXL took over the market and then it was like sort of progressively unbundled into like all of the SaaS tools we see today. And I think when ChatGPT came out everyone tried to build Like ChatGPT wrappers. the pejorative of ChatGPT wrappers... and I think many of them didn't work because ChatGPT hadn't had enough time for people to like use it and get it to even know that they might want something else and I think we are just at the point where enough people have been using ChatGPT and and other tools to be like, 'oh I have this specific workflow where you can kind of like unbundle it a little bit' I think it's like still very early but yeah you can unbundle it (into other tools)

Interesting times ahead for sure!

That's all from this week's edition.

Ravi

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Ravishankar Iyer

How two leading creators are using AI (3-2-1 by Story Rules #84)

𝕏 3 Tweets of the week

📄 2 Articles of the week

🎧 1 long-form listen of the week

How to Build Lasting Memories with your Children (3-2-1 by Story Rules #88)

A Data Story on India's New Elites (3-2-1 by Story Rules #87)

Improve your Public Speaking Skills (3-2-1 by Story Rules #86)