Join host Chrissy Rey on “Website Success” for an exploration of AI’s ethical landscape, a showcase of handy AI tools, and a peek into what AI thinks about its future. This episode unpacks the complexities of using AI responsibly and creatively, from avoiding pitfalls like deep fakes and bias to enhancing your digital space with AI applications. Get ready for an informative journey into the world of AI that’s perfect for tech enthusiasts and digital creators alike.
After you listen, join us in the Website Success Lounge to share your thoughts on AI.
Listen to the Episode
Show Notes
Join Chrissy Rey in this episode of “Website Success” as we dive into the ethical considerations surrounding AI, explore various AI tools to enhance your digital endeavors, and peek into the future of AI.
Timestamps
- 00:00:09 – Introduction to the Episode
- 00:00:43 – Discussing AI Ethics
- 00:00:56 – Ethical Concerns with Generative AI
- 00:02:28 – Copyright Issues and AI-Generated Content
- 00:03:21 – The Problem of Deep Fakes
- 00:03:55 – Limitations of AI in Creating Sensitive Content
- 00:04:17 – Data Privacy in AI
- 00:05:20 – Bias in AI
- 00:06:58 – Transparency in AI Use in Business
- 00:07:55 – Discussing AI Tools for Various Purposes
- 00:08:05 – Chatbots and Content Creation with AI
- 00:09:00 – AI Tools for Image Generation
- 00:09:17 – Using Descript for Audio and Video Editing
- 00:10:20 – Otter for Transcription
- 00:10:52 – Fathom for Video Call Summaries
- 00:11:32 – KoalaWriter for Blogging
- 00:12:30 – Grammarly for Writing and Plagiarism Check
- 00:13:03 – Directory of AI Tools at Futurepedia
- 00:13:13 – Predicting the Future of AI
- 00:14:27 – Conclusion of the Episode
Key Takeaways
- Understanding the ethical implications of AI, including data privacy and bias.
- Exploring a range of AI tools like ChatGPT, DALL-E, Descript, Otter, and Fathom to enhance content creation and efficiency.
- Insight into the potential future developments in AI, and how they might integrate into everyday life.
Resources Mentioned
- Grammarly
- Google Reverse Image Search
- DALL-E
- Midjourney
- Descript
- Otter.ai
- Fathom
- KoalaWriter
- Futurepedia
Transcript
[00:00:09] Hey there friends. Welcome back to “Website Success.” I’m your host, Chrissy Rey and I am here to guide you through another exciting episode in our AI journey. Today, we’re diving into the ethics of AI, some super cool AI tools, and we’ll get AI to give us a glimpse into the future of AI. So grab your favorite beverage and let’s jump right in.
[00:00:43] First let’s discuss the ethics of AI in a world where AI is everywhere from our phones to our fridges, to our cars. It’s really important to ask: are we using AI responsibly?
[00:00:56] Now, as you learned in the previous episode, generative AI learns how to create new content based on training data. So one of the first things that we need to worry about when it comes to ethics is that AI is getting trained on pre-existing text, images, voices, et cetera, and humans created all of that content. Some of them aren’t happy that their original works were used as training data for AI. In fact, the New York times recently sued OpenAI for using their content for training data, and others have filed similar lawsuits against AI companies. So, how do you know if the original content that AI creates for you is truly original, or if it’s cobbled together from works that are protected by copyright. In short, you don’t know. You have to check. So make sure that you run that text that’s generated by AI through a plagiarism detection tool. I use Grammarly to do that, but there are other tools out there that can do that. And as for images, I usually try doing a Google reverse image search to see if what AI generated looks like something that’s already out there on the internet. Also keep in mind that the US Copyright Office has ruled multiple times that AI generated art cannot be copyright protected because it wasn’t created by humans. So if AI is helping you generate all this beautiful art, even though you’re the one that’s writing the prompts and prompting it to create this art, it’s still the one that’s generating it. So you can’t protect any of that with copyright.
[00:02:28] Now on a related note is the ethics of using AI to create things that could actually harm people. For example, you might’ve heard of deep fakes where people created images and videos that use real people, a real people’s faces and voices and things like that. And in some cases , those deep fakes can be pretty harmless, but there have been several instances of harmful deep fakes that put people in compromising positions. A relatively recent one as of the recording of this episode would be with Taylor Swift. She had a bunch of images on, I believe it was Twitter or X that were pornographic in nature and featured her face, but they weren’t actually her. So that’s a big problem. And it’s not okay, but it’s something that we’re probably going to see more of because it’s something that AI is capable of creating.
[00:03:21] Some AI tools specifically prohibit creating any of that kind of stuff. So for example, if I tell DALL-E, which is the AI image generation tool from OpenAI. If I tell it to take a picture of me and then make it look like I’m wearing sunglasses, it’ll tell me that it can create something that looks kind of like me. It’ll use my picture as inspiration, but it won’t create a picture of me using the prompt. Sometimes it will resemble me, but it’s not going to be exactly me. So that’s one way to get around that potential problem.
[00:03:55] Another example of this is getting AI to give you information that could harm people. Like for example, writing code for a virus or giving you instructions on how to commit a crime without getting caught. And some AI tools have been taught not to respond with anything that might be considered toxic, racist, or illegal, or violent, or unethical.
[00:04:17] Another hot topic when it comes to the ethics of AI is data privacy. AI systems are collecting and analyzing our personal data, so the question of the ethical use of that personal data is very important. If you were to upload your social security number or banking info, or maybe even your private thoughts about someone to an AI tool, you probably want to make sure that information is kept safe. Right? Transparency is key here. It’s critical companies using AI need to be crystal clear about how they’re using personal data. But it does go beyond just being open. They also need to empower the users and give them control over their data. It’s not just good ethics. It’s also respecting their individual privacy rights. Users should have the power to decide what information they share and also have easy access to managing their data preferences, which if you’re in the European union, you’ve got GDPR, which does protect your privacy or your data usage rights.
[00:05:20] Another tricky topic of AI ethics is bias. Remember, we’ve already talked about this, but AI is only as good as its training data. So if AI is trained on biased info, it’s going to start showing those biases too. It’s kind of like learning to cook from a recipe book that only has potato recipes, and then thinking that all there is to cook is potato recipes.
[00:05:44] I think it’s also important to be transparent about whether or not you use AI in your business and your work, and also how you’re using it. So for example, If you’re writing an essay for class, you probably shouldn’t use AI to write any of it. You might be able to get it to help you write an outline for it, but then you need to be the one that’s actually writing the paper. Same thing goes for a book. You shouldn’t get AI to write the book for you. Now that’s not to say that people don’t do that, but. I think that if people are going to get AI to do the work for them, they should disclose that. Now I personally use AI for brainstorming, outlining, creating rough drafts, helping me to analyze things, doing competitive analysis, and things like that. It’s a huge time saver because I write for multiple blogs, I have a podcast, I try to publish weekly videos, I create courses, and I still have to find the time to actually make websites for my clients. Just saying all of that made me tired. But when it comes to writing, I don’t just get AI to do it for me. I could. And it could do that, but I don’t get AI to do that for me. I will edit the heck out of anything that AI generates for me. And in many cases I’ll completely rewrite it.
[00:06:58] Now, if I do use AI to help me work on something for a client, like coming up with content ideas based on the client’s keywords, then I’m pretty transparent about the fact that I’m doing that. And in fact, I actually teach my students how to do it themselves.
[00:07:13] Alright, one last thing I want to talk about with ethics is the ethical use and development of AI. It’s not just about the cool things that AI can do, but also about what it really should be doing. So remember, we’re in this together, developers, users, and everyone, and it’s really important to think about how AI affects, not just our profits, but also our communities, our environment, and our whole world. We want to be the good guys with technology, making sure that we’re using AI to make a positive dent in the universe. So when we’re using AI, let’s try to keep our moral compasses handy and steer the ship towards waters that benefit everyone and not just a select few.
[00:07:55] Alright, let’s lighten the mood a little bit and talk about some AI tools that you can use . I already talked about a few tools in the previous episode, but I’m going to cover some more in this episode.
[00:08:05] The first type of tool that you have is chatbots. And those include things like ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude. And you can use all of those tools to help you create original text, like emails, outlines for blog posts, blog posts, and a lot more. You can also get them to write code for you. If you’re a programmer, you just tell the chat bot what language to use and then what you want the code to do. And it’ll have a go at it. It’s not always great, but it can try. ChatGPT can also analyze and transform data for you. Although I have found that it doesn’t like to do a lot at once, so it’ll analyze a whole spreadsheet, but if you ask it to do something with the contents of that spreadsheet, you’ll need to do like 20 or so rows at a time. And another thing that ChatGPT in particular can do is let you access DALL-E, D A L L dash E, which is an image generator.
[00:09:00] Speaking of image generators, DALL-E again is one of them, but you can also use Midjourney, Leonardo and others. And each tool has its pluses and minuses. So, for example, I like DALL-E for illustrations and I’ll use Midjourney if I want photos.
[00:09:17] Another AI tool that I use a lot is Descript, which you can find at descript.com. It’s a really cool tool lets you record audio and video, and it automatically generates a transcript for you. Then you can edit the audio or video using the transcript. So, for example, if I want to go and remove all of my Ah’s and Uh’s and Um’s from my video or my audio. I can just delete those words from the transcript and it automatically deletes them from the audio recording or the video recording.
[00:09:48] One of my favorite features in descript is the overdub feature. I used Descript to create an AI version of my voice, and then if I record the wrong word in my video or my audio, I can replace it with the right one using overdub. And it uses my voice to actually overdub the audio. Sometimes it sounds a little weird. But for a word or two, it usually does a pretty good job. I’d love to see it improve, so I can just write my podcast scripts and feed them into Descript to record everything for me, but it’s not quite there.
[00:10:20] Now, if you need to create transcripts of your existing audio and video, or you want a bot to take notes of your online video calls, then you can use something like Otter, which you can find at otter.ai. I use it to generate transcripts for all of the podcast episodes I recorded before I used Descript. And I also use it to generate transcripts for my clients who want to add them to their website, which is something that I recommend for a variety of reasons, including helping with both accessibility and SEO.
[00:10:52] Another tool that I love is Fathom, which you can find at fathom.video. It’s an AI bot that follows me around in my video calls, so when I go into a Zoom meeting, fathom follows me there, and then not only records the call, but also creates a transcript and even summarizes the key parts of the conversation. I record all of my one-to-one training sessions with Fathom and my clients and students love the recordings because they can read through the transcript or watch the video to get all of the info they need. And they can see that summary and click through it to get to the main points of the presentation. And best of all, Fathom is currently free.
[00:11:32] Now if you’re a blogger, another AI tool you should probably know about is KoalaWriter. Which you can find at koala.sh. It’s powered by GPT-4 from OpenAI, and you can use it to create outlines and SEO optimized blog posts based on keywords. So if you’ve already done your keyword research, you can enter your keyword into KoalaWriter and it will create a full blog post outline, or even write the entire blog post for you. It can also make blog posts based on YouTube videos and existing blog posts. But be careful if you use those features because you don’t want to plagiarize anybody. KoalaWriter can also hook up directly with your WordPress site, but I don’t recommend publishing what it creates without some heavy editing. It does a pretty good job with the outlines and the super rough drafts, but a lot of times the blog posts looked like they were written by AI. So you really want to edit the heck out of them, but it can be a good starting point.
[00:12:30] Another AI tool that I use pretty extensively is Grammarly. It stays on top of my grammar and spelling, and it also has a plagiarism checker, which is something that I’d mentioned earlier. I think you do need the paid version to do all of that, but in my opinion, it’s worth it. I have to write a lot of papers for my graduate classes and Grammarly has been a huge help with that. It also helps with my blog posts. I use it all the time. It’s got extensions that you can put in for Microsoft Word, and also for Chrome and some other browsers.
[00:13:03] There are a bunch of other AI tools out there. There’s a pretty big directory of AI tools at futurepedia.io. So check it out and see what you can find there.
[00:13:13] All right now for the grand finale, a peak into the future of AI. What does tomorrow hold for our digital companions? Are they going to be driving our cars, cooking our meals or composing our symphonies? I asked ChatGPT to tell me what the future of AI is. And the first thing it did was give me a really big list, but I didn’t want to put a big list in here, so I asked it to summarize, and this is what it said, and I quote.
[00:13:38] The future of AI is set to become more integrated into daily life, enhancing personalized experiences and augmenting human capabilities. Advances in machine learning will enable AI to perform increasingly complex tasks with a significant focus on ethical development. AI’s applications will expand in healthcare, environmental solutions, and autonomous vehicles. Additionally, there will be a greater emphasis on regulation and governance to address potential risks associated with AI technologies.
[00:14:13] Sounds pretty good. And if you asked Claude or Bard or one of the other AI chatbots, what the future of AI was, you might get something entirely different. And again, it’ll give you more details upfront, but this was just a summary.
[00:14:27] Well, that’s about it for this episode. We’ve covered a lot and I don’t want to go over by too much, but thank you so much for listening to Website Success. I’m Chrissy Rey, reminding you to keep exploring, keep questioning and above all, keep innovating. I can’t wait to see you in the next episode. Thanks again for listening.
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