2024 Challenge
2024 Challenge: Learn and Leverage AI to do more, faster, better.
Going into 2024, I had a hard time determining a specific Challenge like I’ve done in previous years. However, I saw the possibility of an emerging theme for the year — artificial intelligence (AI).
I’ve been thinking about AI for awhile.
Back in 2017, I built software that aggregated online courses and used AI (machine learning) to personalize learning recommendations to match one’s interests with opportunity (jobs) in the marketplace.
I was probably a bit too early in 2017.
Today, it seems like the technology is “here” or at least “getting there,” and so my 2024 Challenge was to stay abreast of this world-changing tech.
2024 Challenge: Use AI to leverage myself to do more, faster, better.
I admit, this is a vague Challenge without a clear strategy or outcome — a recipe for failure.
But the AI focus paid off.
AI impacted almost everything I did.
- It helped me ideate my drawing
- It helped me write music
- It helped me with business
- It helped me with forecasting
- It helped me with nutrition research
AI and Art
My 2019 Challenge was to learn to draw.
Artists use reference photos for realistic drawing. However, creating original reference photos that match your imagination usually requires advanced education in photography and photoshop.
AI has brought original reference photo creation to the masses.
I used a combination of AI photo generators to depict a bull, the moon, and bitcoin. Then with a little editing in Canva, I was able to create an original reference photo that guided my 2024 drawing.
This year’s drawing was a bitcoin bull getting ready to run to the moon!
Here’s a 6 year Drawing Challenge update with a look at some of the drawings and progress over the years.
AI and Music
My 2020 Challenge was to learn to make music.
Since the original Challenge, music creation technology has advanced thanks to AI.
But first, it’s important to point out that technology has been transforming music creation for decades.
The 12 songs I released in 2020 I did “all myself”…
If you listen, you’ll notice that every track has drums. But I’m not a drummer. This is possible by using a digital audio workstation (DAW) to input MIDI which can play virtual instruments. Besides the vocals (which are obviously my vocals 😂), the production of these songs used virtual instruments.
No one considers this “cheating” as it’s standard practice to get many of the sounds you want.
I mention this because AI is going to change music creation. And people don’t like it. But I view it as just another evolution of music creation.
There are some people who still prefer music with raw vocals and all natural instrumentation. That’s all and well. But most people prefer a vocal that is fine tuned with EQ and compression, that nicely sits in an engineered mix. The latter sound that most people prefer is all thanks to the evolution of technology.
In 2020 I didn’t have access to AI music creation software. This year I did.
I explored over a dozen tools to help me create my 5-year update song: “Easy Ride“
AI helped create the melody and the lyrics. I even used AI to blend my real vocal with an AI vocal that was trained on my real vocal (you can hear it in the “oohs” in the post-chorus interlude).
AI music creation tools are still “early”. They can provide inspiration and aid, but require a lot of the older skill sets to create a “radio-ready” song.
For example, most of the song “Easy Ride” was still produced like my 2020 songs. I still recorded my real vocal, still used MIDI and virtual instruments, still used mixing and mastering by hand (though there are AI mastering services that are quite good).
But AI deserves credit on this song. It helped create the very bones of the song.
My guess is that with the speed of innovation in this area, AI will be spitting out fully fledged “radio ready” songs in the future.
What does this mean for the future of music creation and artists? No idea. But I don’t see the point in raging against the technology. Instead, I’ll see how I can embrace it to create things that perhaps I couldn’t even imagine right now.
In 2020, I also made music videos for the 12 songs I released, so I thought I had to do one for Easy Ride.
The plan was to use AI to generate it. However, as great as AI has been, I couldn’t get it to make a decent music video. But in a year or two, I’m sure it will be standard practice or at least easy to do.
OpenAI is just releasing their AI video generator “Sora,” and Google has “Veo,” both of which give a glimpse of what’s to come, which I believe will prevent me from having to do another music video like this one.
I shot it old school. It’s cringe. I was sick as a dog. But I give myself a pat on the back for getting WAY outside my comfort zone!
AI and Business
In 2013, after graduating dental school, I opened a Dental Sleep Medicine practice, exclusively treating sleep disordered breathing (snoring and obstructive sleep apnea) with oral devices.
These oral devices had challenges…like costs, side effects, and efficacy.
But I had an idea to help overcome these challenges. A “Nasal EPAP Dilator” that I called “NED.”
Over the intervening years, I prototyped, tested, tinkered.
This year I’ve been finalizing development, manufacturing, and regulatory work, and AI has aided me every step of the way.
AI helped me find my engineering team. AI helped me wade through the regulatory complexities of FDA medical devices. And it’s become increasingly clear how it will continue to help me in the future.
For example, consider a company’s costs. The biggest expense is usually employees. But what if AI empowers 1 person to do the work of 10 or 100 or even 1000 people. Impossible? Consider customer service departments. These departments could be hundreds or thousands of people. That’s hundreds or thousands of salaries. But consider an AI bot that has all the company’s knowledge embedded in it that can instantly respond to customer questions. That customer service department could be shrunk significantly, which decreases company costs, which allows the company to decrease product / service costs and be able to compete in the market more effectively. Companies that don’t embrace this technology will be competed out of the market. Which employees don’t get cut? Probably the ones that are using the AI to leverage themselves, to do more, faster, better.
This is just one crude example. But this technology is already available.
It’s also important to mention the flip side of this story.
AI hasn’t been able to help me develop the device. I’ve still had to work with a team of engineers, though I imagine a future where I would have been able to get the device way further myself.
AI wasn’t able to create a good website for me. I spent months designing and developing the SnoreBuds store.
I imagine a future though where AI integrates with the store, providing deep insights into user behavior, optimizations, inventory and accounting management, and much more.
Right now, I view AI as a multi-specialty right-hand assistant that has the potential to continually take more and more off my plate thereby increasing efficiency and effectiveness, doing ever more with less.
Goal: SnoreBuds becomes a massive small company 🙂
AI and Answers
I remember I use to do Google searches to find answers. I’d ask the question, scroll through potential websites. Open a few tabs. Read. And after 20 minutes have an answer.
Now I just ask ChatGPT to just give me the answer. It has replaced most of my Google searches.
For example, I wanted to do some bitcoin forecasting based on its history of 4-year cycles.
I wanted to know what the low price was during the 3rd epoch. On Google, I couldn’t just ask for the answer. A search would bring up websites that talk about these cycles and prices. I’d have to scan through them to try and find the answer.
With ChatGPT, it just spits out the answer.
Using ChatGPT and a ton of data crunching I published the “Stock Model” which challenges the idea of diminishing returns that most people expect.
I know there’s a lot of hype around ChatGPT and overblown claims of advancements towards AGI (which I don’t think they are anywhere close to). This hype causes people to roll their eyes, when they should be focusing in.
For example, the AI hype of 2023 reminded me of 2013 bitcoin. I remember in 2013 when bitcoin hit $1000 and garnered its first real mainstream attention. I got my first wallet and was excited about this new technology. It was going to change money forever! People rolled their eyes.
The hype died down, and so did the price and the interest. People abandoned it. But this post-2013 time period would have been the best time for me to double-down on learning and getting in.
I feel like this is where we are with some AI claims. A bit too much hyperbole, but at the same time I think the excitement is justified and it’s an important technology to focus in on.
AI and Research
This is a dangerous one.
I’ve used AI for a ton of research-related work.
However, if an AI is trained on prevailing biases, how can it do anything besides regurgitate these biases?
It can’t. At least for now, it needs a human’s discernment.
And this is where I’m focusing.
I’ve been doing health and fitness experiments and research for decades. Unraveling the mysteries of human nutrition has been a lifelong obsession.
Now I’m working to bring it all together in a book.
I thought (hoped) I could feed AI my thousands of pages of notes and it could analyze it, organize it, and output a rough draft. It couldn’t. Not even close. I think someday it will be able to, but it looks like I’m going to have to do this work myself. With AI’s help of course.
It already helped me make a plan on how I can finish a complete draft in 2025 (my 2025 Challenge).
ChatGPT told me that at my pace of writing it will take me on average an hour to write 400 words. So if I can set aside an hour 4-5 days/week, I can write 2000 words a week, and finish the book draft in 2025.
2024 Challenge: Conclusions and the Future
AI impacted most of my work in 2024 and I suspect it will continue to do so, likely at an increasing rate.
Right now, I view most of these AI tools like assistants. The trap (for now) is thinking it will just do all the work for you. Maybe someday. Right now, you still got to do the work.
AI helped ideate a reference photo, but I still had to piece it together.
AI helped draft a song, but I still had to make it.
AI helped organize business tasks, but I still had to execute.
AI helped garner answers, but I still had to check them.
AI helped research my book, but I still have to write it.
To me, it’s clear AI will continue to integrate into most aspects of work. And life…
It helped me find Christmas gifts, select my next pair of shoes based on drop height and toe box requirements, plan a trip to Michigan, and recommended my next book.
With work related services, I’ve gotten to the point where I expect AI integration to some degree. The app I use for SnoreBuds’ customer service had to integrate with AI or I wasn’t interested. This will be increasingly the case.
Would you choose a school where all the kids learned the same thing at the same rate regardless of their ability, or would you choose one that integrated personal AI’s that sped up the curriculum where your kid excelled and slowed down where they struggled?
Would you choose the doctor that used AI to supplement his diagnoses or the one who just went off what he learned in medical school 20+ years ago?
AI will integrate into all aspects of life.
AI agents will take your data, reason, and automate actions based on your defined objectives. This will increase autonomy, personalization, and optimization across every industry.
It’s an exciting time to be alive.
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