Weekly Tool Thread: Promote, Share, Discover, and Ask for AI Writing Tools Week of: June 23

m_hathawaygreen shared this post · 1h ago

Weekly Tool Thread: Promote, Share, Discover, and Ask for AI Writing Tools Week of: June 23

TL;DR - mapping the ideas in a rough draft, setting one as the core idea, and then seeing which of my other ideas contradict my core idea help me write a better essay.

I took Elad Gil's essay "Random thoughts while gazing at the misty AI Frontier" and put it into this little "idea map" tool I built.

It's fun to see how the random thoughts connect. A lot of rough drafts start like this, with many ideas going many directions.

By setting any bubble as the core idea, the underlying LLM will surface "tensions" with your other minor ideas.

Those "tensions" serve as a great place to improve your explanation of your core idea by explaining the seemingly incongruent aspects.

Hoping this will help writers go from idea dump to clarity about a specific topic or problem faster and more accurately.

I usually start with a like a flash of inspiration where I narrate a long voice note. Mapping my ideas visually like this is helping me understand what the hell I'm trying to say first before I go any further.

It's that intermediate step that most of us skip when we use AI to write. Alot of us go from zero-to-done but skip this "understanding" step and end up with slop.

Tell me what you think.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMGr00x_52M

Original Essay: https://blog.eladgil.com/p/random-thoughts-while-gazing-at-the

Decent_Solution5000 Super interesting innovation, kind of like exploring your ideas and finding your theme before you hit the keyboard. We'd love to know more. What are your plans for it? SaaS? One time download? Open Source as a contribution to the writing community? Please tell us all about it.

Thanks for sharing, and welcome to the community. 😄 Jun 24 2 likes

pattyplanb Author It's going to be part of my subscription product called Feedback Freak. It's an "essay writing OS". It's also going to be a massive community tool. Since your ideas are all mapped out each time you write an essay, Feedback Freak will also match you with other writers thinking / writing about similar problems / topics.

This addresses a core loneliness issue with writing and creating. Especially with the advent of AI, people are collaborating far less which is not good.

So, this is just the first many features to attract more writers to eventually build a network of collaborators. Jun 24 1 like

Decent_Solution5000 Freaking love the name! XD Such a great idea! Writers need these kinds of communities. Please keep us updated as you move forward. This thread is new every week, and we love updates. Happy you found us. :) Jun 24 2 likes

pattyplanb Author Ok will do thanks Jun 25 1 like

faelu19 Honestly, anything that makes people actually do the thinking bit before ChatGPT churns out more slop is a win. Jun 29 2 likes

pattyplanb Author Exactly, and it's not even like a moral thing; it's just for the writer themselves. They will have more fun if they make the creative decisions and do the actual thinking. They will get clarity. And then, as a by-product, the reader will get a higher throughput of actual knowledge/opinion. But I do struggle with at what level you should use AI to write.

Can you have it rewrite at the sentence level. I think so, at least in most cases. Paragraph level? maybe, maybe not.

So it's all about division of labor. If you break up the writing process into thinking/creative tasks and like non-creative mechanical tasks, then it becomes more clear what you can outsource to AI. Obviously, it is the latter. Jun 29 1 like