AI could change your life this year. Will you let it? Photo / 123rf
As the power of AI continues to grow exponentially, here are nine ways to make sure you benefit.
Idea generation has been one of the most popular uses of generative AI since the public release of ChatGPT two years ago, and it’s gotten much better since then.
A few weeks ago I typed into AI brainstorming app Ideamap: “I need to write an article for my newspaper about how to change your life with AI in 2025″.
In just a few seconds it created 70 entries across five main categories (“Transforming daily life / economic opportunities / societal impact / social connectivity / creativity and innovation”) via a beautifully rendered, colour-coded mindmap.
The information was impressive enough, but the visualisation was the really impressive bit. It was far more powerful than any 1400-word block of text could ever be.
Men might be doing more of the chores than they used to but they’re still way behind on what’s known as “the mental load”: the planning, co-ordinating, scheduling, organising, assigning and following up on all the thousands of tasks big and small needed to make a family work.
A recent NZ Herald headline put it this way: “Being CEO of the household is weighing women down and hurting relationships”.
It told of a UC Berkeley study, which found: “Women reported being responsible for 73% of the cognitive labour, leading them to feel stressed, depressed, burned out and dissatisfied with their relationship”.
A bevy of AI-based apps is now available that might be able to help with this. Apps like Gether, Goldee and Jam allow you to forward emails and other correspondence to an email address where AI detects your family’s names and automatically schedules their events in your and their calendars, and assigns people to the right tasks.
The tech isn’t all the way there yet, still requiring some manual inputs, but it’s a massive leap forward. The question is: will this get more men involved in the mental labour or just make them feel better that things are slightly easier for their partners?
The amount of research on happiness and how to improve it has grown exponentially in the past 20 years, to the point where it’s become impossible to know what to do with it, or even where to start. Imagine if you could feed all that information into an AI and have it create you a plan for how to live the perfect life. Well you can’t, but you can get closer than ever before.
There are many platforms that allow you to upload files and get AI to answer your questions, give you insights and do all sorts of other cool things. The one that’s getting most of the attention is Google’s NotebookLM, probably partly because it’s Google, partly because it’s very good, partly because it’s free.
I took thousands of words of research from positive psychology research repository the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, fed them into NotebookLM and asked it to construct a plan that would maximise my wellbeing in 2025. Here’s its top-line summary:
Morning:
Mindfulness meditation (5-10 minutes):
Gratitude journaling (5 minutes):
Purpose check-in (5 minutes):
Afternoon:
Social Connection Break (10 minutes):
Awe Walk (5 minutes):
Evening:
Altruism Hour (15 minutes):
Reflect and Plan (5 minutes):
Weekly practices:
Gratitude letter (once a week):
Social gathering (once or twice a week):
Awe-inspiring experience (once a week):
I’m sharing it with you as part of my altruism hour. In return, perhaps you could write me a gratitude letter.
Apps such as Venture Planner, LivePlan and VentureKit allow you to write a sentence or two about some vague moneymaking idea, click some boxes and come out with a full, extremely impressive-sounding (and looking) business plan.
No ideas? No worries! Ask ChatGPT or some other LLM what they suggest, then cut and paste into Venture Planner.
Want some extra cash but can’t be bothered with all the hassle and expense of a startup?
Write a few sentences about something you know something about, and platforms like Teachable or Heights can instantly turn it into an online course, including full lesson plans, with which you can then spam your friends on social media.
Who knows? Maybe someone will pay you for it.
I set up a writing course up in less than 10 minutes, including detailed lesson plans and a full website including pictures of happy families I’d never seen who were presumably delighted by my valueless course they’d never heard of.
Want to give someone a piece of your mind about the issues of the day, but you’ve clicked on a bunch of studies you thought would prove your point and you’ve got no idea what they mean?
I gave NotebookLM three papers and one book about education in New Zealand and asked it for talking points that could be used for a talkback radio call complaining about the dire state of Kiwi kids’ reading.
It responded with 10 ideas, every one of them excellent.
The first read: “Over a third of 15-year-olds in New Zealand struggle to read and write. This is a shocking statistic uncovered by Unicef in 2020. This isn’t just about acing exams – poor literacy is linked to poorer health, lower incomes, and even criminal activity. Something needs to change!”
I could feel the phone lines lighting up even before I’d reached the exclamation mark.
“Future You” is a project from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which helps you create a 65-year-old chatbot version of yourself and chat with it about any topic you like: existential dread, disappointment at the state of the world, general sense of ennui and so on. An initial study into the project reported all sorts of benefits for users, including decreased anxiety, improved mental health and better academic performance.
Side note: The project is targeted at younger people, who have had far less time to become worn down by life.
Mental health chatbots are suddenly everywhere.
Their MO is generally therapy 101: they ask you how you’re feeling, then offer “empathy”, then conclude with potential coping strategies. Some studies have shown these bots to have promise, and while it’s doubtful they’re as good as real therapy for your mental health, they’re definitely much better for your financial health.
When I told Earkick about my many stresses and anxieties, it suggested using “micro breaks” for a five-step mindfulness practice (“Pause and acknowledge, find your breath, focus on the present, let go of thoughts, return to your breath”) which, while not groundbreaking, cost me $150 less than the almost identical advice I once paid $150 an hour for.
Employers have been using AI to screen you out of your dream job for years, so it’s only fair that you can now use AI to beat them at their own game.
Apps like Jobscan, Kickresume and Job Copilot allow you to find jobs, build your CV and write cover letters that can beat the screening systems, all with a minimum of effort. Some of them will even auto-apply for jobs on your behalf.
Pro tip: tell AI to include in your application the fact that AI created your job application, demonstrating to employers both your technical prowess and your ruthless commitment to productivity.
It’s not just CVs AI can help with. The career-help corner of the AI universe is booming. I used a free tool from Taplio to critique my LinkedIn profile. It was both surprisingly good and crushingly brutal and led me to make several changes. I also asked it to assess the LinkedIn profile of Bill Gates. It criticised his failure to include his key skills.
I googled “how to change the world”, found 20-30 research papers, articles and even books, fed them into NotebookLM, then asked it for answers. It produced 1000 well-researched, erudite and occasionally inspiring words, but right now you probably just want the key points:
1. Identify problems that resonate with you.
2. Deconstruct the problem and understand the context.
3. Embrace experimentation and learning.
4. Become a “changemaker” by cultivating essential skills: these include empathy, vision, initiative, resourcefulness, persistence.
5. Join or support existing organisations.
6. Promote a culture of change in your own sphere of influence.
7. Remember that building state capability takes time and collaboration.
Irregular sleep is linked to increased risks of heart attack, dementia and depression.