The AI Tools I Use in My Work
My 10 Favorite Tools and Their Impact on Future Research
Hey there,
We were driving back from the Randstad to the office in Utrecht. It's March 2011. I just graduated, and I am working at a consulting and research firm.
My first client meeting was over. I was confused. We hadn't discussed anything substantive with the client. The conversation was about geopolitical issues, the state of the economy, and problems at the neighboring municipality.
My senior colleague, about 45 years old in an expensive dark blue suit, wasn't worried.
'We'll get this assignment, Peter. Our work isn't just about content, but also about the connection you make with each other.'
And sure enough, 10 minutes later, he was called by the client. They awarded us the assignment.
Recently, I was reminded of this car ride when I used ChatGPT's Deep Research tool for my work.
Because what I did back then as a junior consultant, such as summarizing documents, cleaning up spreadsheets, and transcribing interviews, AI now does almost as well.
I also notice this in my own work as a futurist and innovation expert: AI is taking over more and more tasks. That's why the theme of this newsletter is: how I use AI in my current work.
Enjoy reading, Peter
How I Use AI in My Work
As a futurist and innovation expert, I talk a lot about AI during presentations and its impact on the client's work. At the same time, it's a topic that influences my own work. In the past few months, I've been using more and more AI tools.
I mainly use AI for researching trends, for example ChatGPT's Deep Research function. But it's also super handy for other tasks, such as making transcriptions, editing images, or generating subtitles for videos.
Researching Trends with AI
An important part of my work is researching trends and developments, on various topics and in different industries and policy domains. This variety is exactly what makes my work so fascinating.
To give you an idea of some assignments from the recent period:
The future of laboratory diagnostics for clinical chemists and clinical biologists;
The future of Enterprise Asset Management;
Developments in Planning & Control for a large municipality.
I notice that I increasingly use AI tools for preliminary research. In my video that I mentioned in the intro, you can see how I use tools like ChatGPT or Claude for this.
Deep Research
Deep Research is a special research agent from ChatGPT. This is currently a paid feature.
Compared to the normal functions in ChatGPT, you first get a number of follow-up questions. After answering those, ChatGPT searches for sources and delivers (depending on the complexity) a comprehensive research report within a few minutes to hours.
I must say: I was impressed by what Deep Research produced. I already understood that AI tools would take over many tasks from knowledge workers, but when working with Deep Research, this really hit home.
Check out my (English) video about Deep Research, including my reaction and the impact it will have on knowledge workers:
My Top 10 AI Tools
These are other AI tools that I regularly use in my work:
Perplexity - search engine with AI.
EvidenceHunt - search engine with biomedical and clinical literature.
NotebookLM - AI assistant that you can train with your own documents and sources.
Canva - create and modify images.
Amberscript - subtitles for my videos.
Wispr Flow - convert speech to text.
GoodTape - transcriptions, for example, of podcast conversations.
AudioPen - transform speech into compact notes.
Leo - assistant in my Brave browser, to summarize websites, for example.
Ghostreader - assistant in Reader to automatically label articles and papers, etc.
I'm curious which AI tools you use. Reply to this email or leave a comment! 🙌
Deep Dive on AI & Work
Articles, books, podcasts, videos, documentaries, and more on this theme.
1. READ / Interesting discussion about Artificial General Intelligence by the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies.
2. READ / My Flemish colleague Stefan recommended the book The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman to me. The core of the book is the impact of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology on our lives.
3. WATCH / Recently I rewatched the film Blade Runner 2049 (8.0 on IMDb). Strong points: the desolate environment, the cyberpunk atmosphere, the synthetic retro music, and actors like Robin Wright, Ryan Gosling, and Harrison Ford.
🙏 Thank you for reading
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