118: Is It OK To Use AI To Write Your Emails?

Rosie (00:01)
RULA!

Roula (00:03)
Rosie.

Rosie (00:05)
You've got such a nice voice. Do you get told that a lot?

Roula (00:11)
⁓ yeah, sometimes. Yes, yes, yes. You know, my son is watching Japanese anime and then he tells me the name of the characters and then I say to the Japanese voice, at least that's what I think. And he keep repeating the name. He keep wanting me to say it over and over again.

Rosie (00:14)
Mmm. ⁓

Hahaha

I love that.

Okay, yes, that sounds cool. That sounds really cool.

Question time though. It's a bit of a random one, but I think all our questions are random. I want to talk about AI and not in the doom gloom it's taken over the world way. I have found that I'm using it more and more. And confession listeners, we use it to help us write our descriptions.

because otherwise we would be spending so much time. We release an episode every weekday. So we use AI for that. That aside, recently I've been using it to help me draft some emails.

And I found myself feeling guilty because I hadn't written it from scratch. I was cheating.

What are your thoughts?

Roula (01:40)
I don't think anyone got rich by reinventing the wheel.

Rosie (01:45)
Well, that's true. Yeah.

Is that the end of the episode? ⁓

Roula (01:49)
Yeah, no.

also had someone a couple of weeks ago telling me that people using AI are lazy, not creative, et cetera. And I think in this time of age and age, time and age...

Rosie (02:03)
Mmm. Mmm.

Day and age,

Roula (02:14)
Day and age, yes.

We better get to know AI than turn our back on it. It's not going anywhere. It's getting better. And there is this wrong misconception that if you use AI, you're not doing the work yourself. If you use AI...

Rosie (02:30)
You still have to know

what prompt to write. And you know what? It's making my life easier. So the emails I'm talking about, I've been writing pitches to companies to try and see if any of them will sponsor me or collaborate. And it's something I've never done before. If I was to write these emails from scratch, it probably would have taken me days. I'm not exaggerating, but using chat GPT, I was able... ⁓

Roula (02:52)
True.

Rosie (02:57)
Like I'd give it a super rough draft I wasn't happy with and then say, help me do this, make it monster sink, da da da. And it would spit something out and I was like, oh my God, that's so good. Now I, 99 % of the time will adapt it.

Roula (03:14)
Sure.

Rosie (03:15)
because I do still want it to sound like me. It doesn't always get the tone right.

Roula (03:18)
But people don't know what

you mean with adapted. Can you explain?

Rosie (03:21)
⁓ edit it. will edit

it. will edit it to... Sometimes I don't agree with what it says or it'll use words. I'm like, I wouldn't say that. That's just not me. So little tweaks like that. But wow, it saved me so much time. It helped me personalize emails to different companies because I wanted the emails personalized. So I had to talk about their vision and their mission and da-da-da. And I found myself feeling really guilty. my God, I didn't write this myself.

Roula (03:51)
You did write it yourself and you asked AI to enhance it to correct your English to give you inspiration. Because AI will ⁓ not know what kind of email you're going to send if you have not wrote your email and the goal. Just like, you know, I write my scripts and then I ask AI to correct my English to ⁓

Rosie (03:51)
and I... ⁓

Okay, what if I asked it to do it from scratch?

What if?

Yeah.

Roula (04:19)
Give you know, yeah, it's correct my English. I asked AI is there a harmony? Can you make it more harm? Like, you know, people want to follow a certain flow. Can you help me with that? And AI does this, but this doesn't mean I'm taking it and copying it and doing it. No, I'm taking it and making it my own. So these are ideas and creativities that I'm using. AI will not do our homework because no matter

Rosie (04:20)
Mmm.

Mm.

Mm.

Roula (04:48)
have a certain tone of voice. If I'm going to ask AI to write something and I'm gonna read it as AI wrote it, anyone will know that's not me. But also another thing, Rosie, okay? When I'm AI is my companion. It's so incredibly valuable. I look in my fridge and I say, okay, I have a zucchini, I have some mint,

Rosie (04:50)
Yeah.

AA can't duplicate ruler. No.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Roula (05:16)
I look what vegetables I have. Instead of throwing them away, I ask Chad GPT, what can I make with these ingredients? And boom, I have a recipe. I have not failed one recipe. They all taste amazing. And I'm not throwing vegetables anymore.

Rosie (05:30)
I love that.

That's so good. I got ChatGPT to help me write a shopping list once. It was great.

Roula (05:43)
It's great! I even asked AI to write a shopping list the same route as the supermarket. Yes!

Rosie (05:47)
Same! I got it to write it, yes, in sections. It was fabulous. So

good. Yes. But I want to go back a little bit because I feel like I'm losing my skill to write well. I've always considered myself a fairly good writer.

But I'm using AI more and more to help me write these things and it worries me. But am I just, am I being dramatic? Does it matter?

Roula (06:15)
Yes,

because these things are not coming to AI. You're writing what you want to write about.

Rosie (06:23)
But what if I just said to it, write me an email from scratch talking about these things? And I didn't give it a draft initially.

Roula (06:30)
So there are things, it's okay. Email is fine. A recipe is fine. For example, I had small, I was an MC at my friend's birthday and I had to write, I wanted to make like small stand up, stand up-ish thing for her. ⁓ And I started writing it. I write, I wrote, I wrote, and it was really nice.

And at a certain point, I wanted to alter some jokes. And this is where I asked AI to add, for example, I'm going to say what it was. No, no, that was my idea, this joke. I can't remember. I wanted to give me a couple of jokes about becoming 50, 50 years old. And yes, when I got these jokes, I was like, I could have thought of them myself. But then I looked at the bigger picture.

Rosie (07:03)
Mmm.

Mm.

Roula (07:26)
I done 90 % of the writing and ChadGPT helped me with 10%, which is correcting my English, making the text flow nicely. So yes, there are things that you must not ask AI to do because this is your expertise. But writing an email? Come on. I worked all my life in automating department, becoming more efficient.

Rosie (07:34)
Mmm. Mmm.

Mmm.

That's cool. Alright.

Roula (07:55)
So that's why my perspective is different. Why

would I spend hours on something that AI can help me with in two minutes? Is this smart or is it stupid? It's not doing my job. It's helping me. And it hurts my feelings when people say, ⁓ AI is stupid. I don't want anything to do with it. ⁓ If you ask the AI, it means you're not doing your job. Sorry. I think it's stupid not to learn how to use AI.

Rosie (08:02)
True. Makes life easier. does.

No.

Yeah. Yeah.

Roula (08:27)
When my son later will come and show me his homework, and if I never used AI, I will not know how much he puts in it and how much AI puts in it. It's educating ourselves, people. It's not going anywhere, AI. It's not going anywhere. When the computer started, social media, how much we resisted posting every day. How many, how much we resisted posting every day on social media? And now I'm noticing posting every day.

Rosie (08:37)
you

You're so passionate about this! Yeah... Yeah...

Roula (08:56)
is boosting our podcast. So my beliefs were wrong because I was resisting the change.

Rosie (08:58)
Mm.

I think the key is educating ourselves, right? We can't force anyone to use AI, but why not educate yourself? Try it out rather than jumping to conclusions. And I think this is going to be a struggle I continue to have, like feeling guilty with using it to make my life easier. And it's changed so quickly. I, last time I studied, I did my MBA in 2020. So what? Five years ago, I wasn't even on my radar.

But now I know I could use ChatGPT to help me write an essay. It's changed. Does that mean we shouldn't use AI to do assignments? I don't think so. However, you can't, I don't know where I'm going, but there's so many gray areas. I don't think it's just, yes, AI is good for everything.

Roula (09:57)
Rosie,

what if learning must change now with AI?

Rosie (10:02)
It

has to, yeah, I think it has to.

Roula (10:04)
What if we've been doing teaching? It's been going on the same. The teachers at school, they are the most not advanced people around me because they just want to do the same, but our kids are more advanced. My kid knows more than the teacher. He speaks better English. He has a better grammar. He has more general information because him, just like any other children,

Rosie (10:14)
⁓ great. Yeah.

Roula (10:34)
The world is big. We need to move forward, not backward, not stay stuck. Maybe it's time to start reconsidering how we're teaching, how we're doing things, exactly because there is AI.

Rosie (10:36)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Totally.

Yeah, learning looks different and just because it was done one way doesn't mean it's right. Think of where the schooling system started in the industrial revolution, just channeling people through, I don't have the word, channel, channel, channel. You know what I mean? Workers, busy bees, you know, in the system. No, things have changed.

Roula (11:06)
Yes, yes. You know, if

If you're not specialized,

like you're an engineer or a doctor, a surgeon, your education and my education, okay, I started accounting. cannot help me to be an accountant. I have to know how to do it on papers myself, right? It could help. So what I want to say, Rosie, is that I'm forgetting what I want to say. Yes.

Rosie (11:25)
It could help though! It could help. Yeah.

You're turning

into me now.

Roula (11:35)
Some stuff

we ask AI to do really don't have added value in our future. So if AI writes an essay for you, tell me today, how are you benefiting from this essay you wrote five years ago? It was only for your grade. It was only to make you pass. It doesn't define who you are as a person and your capability. And I know I might have backlash on this. And I'm not saying we should not do it.

Rosie (11:40)
Right.

I'm not. Yeah, true. You're right.

Roula (12:03)
I'm saying we need to change the way we're doing it.

Rosie (12:07)
Yeah. Agreed. Less guilt, more curiosity. Don't make life harder than it has to be.

Roula (12:17)
You know what they say and I'm sure I'm not saying it correctly.

You have to keep your enemies close to you. If you don't know your enemy, you're losing your battle. And if AI is our enemy and we don't want to know it, we will be freaking ignorant.

Rosie (12:25)
Hmm.

That's dangerous.

Yeah, don't be ignorant. Don't put your head in the sand.

Roula (12:41)
lot of people put in their head in the sand but it's okay it's also not for everyone

Rosie (12:46)
It's not, but I think we all need to be better educated, for sure. Don't just jump on the bandwagon, it's bad, or jump on the bandwagon, it's amazing and it's the best thing ever. I think you just need to make your own opinion.

Roula (12:59)
You know, for our children, Rosie,

for our children, how much now we're suffering from what social media is affecting them. Because we as parents did not open up and introduce ourselves to social media with them so that we learn what they're learning. And with AI is going to do the same thing. Soon we will be blaming AI for ruining stuff for our kids. So why not learn it with them so we grow together in this area?

Rosie (13:07)
Mmm.

Whoa.

Roula (13:29)
and we can help them better.

Rosie (13:30)
Wow. Yeah. When you put it like that, that's powerful. I'm just saying.

Roula (13:35)
I'm just saying.

I'm

giving you my podcast voice now.

Rosie (13:40)
You are.

Ruler's sexy podcast voice. Let us know. Stop it!

Roula (13:45)
Ooh, ⁓ my goodness, just shut up, up. Let's stop it. Do you use

AI or not?

Rosie (13:54)
⁓ you're of shit.

Roula (13:54)
That wasn't my voice, that was AI.

I am.