A recent study showed that people who relied on ChatGPT had weakened brain connectivity and reduced memory retention.

But there’s hope. If you use AI the right way.

Why AI Is Making You Dumber

This is actual scientific study world. From the world of science, there are a couple studies. One of them is called “Your Brain on ChatGPT” and it’s from MIT, and it found that people who relied on ChatGPT showed the weakest brain connectivity, lowest memory retention, and the effects continued for weeks after they discontinued use of AI.

I wonder why that is. Is it because you’re atrophying part of your brain that has cognitive thinking and reasoning? Or is it because it’s even that pleasure center where you get that dopamine hit?

I know basically nothing about the brain. I have one and that’s basically as far as I go. Well, sometimes I have one.

The Alzheimer’s Connection

It’s like you have something like Alzheimer’s where the cognitive decline of someone who gets Alzheimer’s is directly correlated with their regular brain activity. People who do crossword puzzles and puzzles and write and read and all the things that actually stimulate parts of the brain—not necessarily watching TV—doing things that actually require you to be putting together new connections in your brain has been shown, not through this study but through other studies, to reduce the incidence of Alzheimer’s.

That’s very interesting. That’s why my grandma’s always doing the crossword. She really is because she’s trying to fight that off because it runs rampant through my family, which is why I can’t remember anything.

So I mean that sort of connects then when people are regularly offloading their thinking, not using AI for enhancement but telling AI “tell me basically what I think about this.”

The Real-World Example

So that’s what started this episode, this idea. I was reflecting as I was writing—spoiler alert—a newsletter coming out in a little bit. And if you’re not on the newsletter, it’s usefulnotfamous.com to put your email. And every Monday, sometimes Tuesday, you get an email from Sweetie Pie over here.

This came about when I was just reflecting on something. I was thinking back to—this will always stick with me—when we were recording with someone that we work with. Basically how it works is I’ll come up with the entire content plan of short form and long form content, long form being YouTube videos. And I have the basic premise of the YouTube video where it’s like the idea and then follow-up questions for you to answer.

Super straightforward. It’s basically just like a prompt sort of thing. You’re writing a mini essay almost to prepare so you know what you’ll talk about, not so you write a script. Not writing scripts, purely just for you to get your thoughts in order and be like “Oh, cool. I want to talk about this place.” Very straightforward stuff—you know your community. Let’s talk about it.

The ChatGPT Notes Disaster

So what happened one particular recording was—I don’t even remember what the video was about, but I just remember she showed up with notes—almost half an inch thick of notes. And I was like “wow, someone came to party.” And I looked and it was all ChatGPT.

And I was like “is that ChatGPT written?” And then she’s like “Yeah, I ran out of time.” And I was like “But you took the time.”

This is someone who was born, raised, lived in the same exact community her entire life, knew the area inside and out. Just driving around, she’d be like “Oh, there’s that. Oh, there’s that. Oh, there’s that.”

But when it came to actually answering it in video form, which maybe it could just be like a performance thing—I think she just stressed herself out. But anyway, I was like “Okay, let’s see how this video goes.”

I want to rewind for one second—this was the one and only time that this happened because every single time before that was natural from the brain. So then this was when ChatGPT was really becoming the thing that you use and you have all these think groups and masterminds who are like “use AI for every thought you have on this planet.” And it’s like “how about you use your brain for certain things that only you know?”

So huge stack of notes. So I was like “okay, let’s just see how this goes.” But I could just feel the stress from her as she was trying to read through. And then she would read one sentence at a time and then recite it to camera and then go back and read the next one.

I remember before that though you would say “Oh, so tell me about XYZ.” And then it would be “Oh, let me see my notes.” And then you finally took the notes away because I was getting, to be fully honest, I was getting very frustrated because I was like “No, you know this. What are you doing? Stop reading your notes. You don’t need notes. You live here for a hundred years.”

So you finally took the notes and then you’re like “okay, no, no, no. Just let’s just talk. You don’t need notes. It’s a crutch. Just like we’ve always done.” And as soon as you did that, there was a little moment of like “what do I say?”

But then as soon as you did that, it was like the safety security blanket was gone, and then she could just say whatever she wanted to because she was released from the shackles of the perfect ChatGPT answer.

So anyway, that will always stick with me as the perfect use case of not having AI tell you everything.

The Problem with AI Experts

And everyone is selling AI right now—selling to use it. And something I just posted today: the perfect way to have a life that you do not want to have is to take advice from someone who is leading a life you do not want to have.

And sadly, most of the people who are selling things, especially online, they may have found one thing that worked for them once and now they’re the expert in X where that isn’t something they actually have experience in. They’re like “Oh, I made this video. I had a lot of views. I’m going to teach you how to make videos.”

And we work with a lot of realtors and this happens all the time in this space because there’s the thought of easy money. Any promise of easy money will be something that we’ll all be gravitated towards because we work hard. We all work so hard and we’re so busy and it feels like we’re getting pennies for everything we do.

So it’s completely natural to be like “this is easy money. I can sell people on this.” But also stop buying things—buy things from people who are leading a life you want to lead, not people who are in the same or worse boat than you are.

The Local Content Problem

Another thing to think about with using AI for responses—specifically, we’re talking about local content. I should have said that at the top. With local content, if you ask AI—specifically, I’m going to pick on ChatGPT—they’re going to give you the same answers that they’ve given 55 other realtors in your market.

Guess what? You’re going to look like an idiot because you all have the same answers. And the problem is when you don’t stick out, you blend in. You look like every other realtor in the area.

And especially if you’re doing faceless content even too, then you really just blend in with everybody. You don’t even have your face in there where you look unique.

So anyway, just dig into your soul, what you have left, and then just pick out your places.

What We’ve Been Up To

The Faceless Content Problem

Faceless comes up because yesterday or the day before we saw someone who was showing how they made faceless—not faceless, faced—real estate content where they were touring actual homes that were for sale.

It’s to the point now where people have workflows for creating actual home tours where all they do is they have an AI avatar and the still photos from Zillow or the MLS and it can look like someone is touring the home.

So suddenly if you can just generate these for every single listing in your entire market or the entire country if you wanted—faceless content—how helpful is that now? Because I want to watch a person. This person is showing me around when I don’t even realize it’s just sort of basically shifting the angle on a photo. That’s all it is.

But that’s basically what a home tour is. Or even if you’re terrified to be on camera—which you really need to get past that, I need to be the hard love person—but if you are absolutely terrified to be on camera, then use this to your benefit and just be like “Oh, well, Billy Bob is on my team and he just does all the video content and then I’m the head of the team.”

You can do anything. If you want to fake it, you totally can. Just have somebody’s face on that video.

Getting Recognized in Public

So anyway, that brings me to this weekend when we went out in our town. We’ve been very busy lately, but it’s all good stuff. This weekend when we were going out to film our local content—part of what we’re doing with local content is to inform the product that we’re working on.

So we were out filming my local content for our town. I’ve absolutely loved it. It’s been so much fun and I actually haven’t really talked to anybody in the public yet because we’re very private and we don’t really talk to many people, to be fully honest. We have exactly zero friends in town. I mean that sounds sad. We just keep to ourselves. We’re always working so all of our friends are elsewhere and we travel to them.

So we were out and it was a Friday night, which I never record on the weekends like that. I purposely avoid it because I don’t want to be in all the mishmash of everybody else who’s off work. So we went out Friday night and I was like “Okay, fine. We’ll just turn it into a date night. We’ll hit a couple spots and then just do video content for it.”

So we go to this one restaurant that I’ve wanted to go to because I love their gluten-free sandwich. It’s so good. And we go there. We’re sitting outside and then all of a sudden I get up to go to the bathroom and then this lady stops me and she’s like “Oh, you’re [name of the platform]” and I was like “Yeah, hi.”

And I was like “Oh, I’m not prepared for this. I’m not prepared to be recognized out in public,” which has happened once before, but that was already months ago by now.

So then she stops me, we talk for a little bit, and then we had already interacted over DMs, and she’s like “Oh, I’m blah blah blah.” And I was like “Oh my god, hi.” And then we talked for a little bit and then I was like “Okay, I’m sorry. I really have to pee.”

So I get in the doors and I get two feet inside the doors and another person is like “Hey, you’re blah blah blah.” And I was like “Oh, yeah. Hi.”

And blah blah being the brand name—being the name of the platform. I get DMs all the time and they’re like “Can I follow you?” F*ck off.

But yeah, it’s the brand name. We build everything around brand and there’s personal brand and there’s brand brand. This is a brand. So it’s not Amara, it’s not your name as the platform.

The Power of Branding

So this is the beauty—this platform people know by name, not even from visuals because we haven’t even created a logo yet. Literally they know it from our brand opener/closer stuff we’ve talked about in the past.

So then I talked to that next lady for a little bit and then I’m like “Okay, sorry. I have to go pee.” And meanwhile I saw that her food was delivered. So I was like “I got to go back.”

Then I get stopped another time right as I’m about to go to the bathroom. More than that, though, you said there was someone standing there clearly waiting. Waiting. And then it was drawing like a little crowd where people were looking like “Who is that?” And I was like “Nobody look at me.”

So anyway, I finally got to the bathroom, but I got stopped three different times at one restaurant within like 15 minutes. It was the craziest thing ever. And I was like “I can’t go back outside.”

We were sitting outside at the table to eat and you were talking to the person at the other table on your way in. So I was like “All right, that’s cool.” And the food came and I’m like “I’m just going to wait to eat.” And I was waiting and by the time you went in, waiting, waiting.

The waitress comes out. She’s like “Oh, is everything okay?” And I was like “Oh, yeah. I’m just waiting on her.” And she looked at me with a big smile and said “I know.” And I was like “That’s weird.” I thought she just knew you went to the bathroom or something, but apparently everyone knew that you had a little line of people waiting to greet you.

It was actually a little overwhelming because I wasn’t prepared for that mentally. I like to be mentally prepared for things. And I was like “Oh no, what have I done? I’m a local celebrity.” Very, very small scale.

But then it was funny because then when you came back to the table, the waitress is really nice, but I’m just looking at how she’s looking at you. She looked at me differently. Like before she didn’t really even look at me, but then she was like “You’re welcome.” And I was like “Is she going to kiss me?”

The Useful Not Famous Effect

But that’s what’s interesting. So now, what is the name of this show? Useful Not Famous. So the whole—the only reason anyone knows who you are in town is because the platform has been found to be very useful.

Because I try to be as useful as possible. It’s not—there’s never been a single thing of “this is me. This is who I am. You need to know who I am.” None of them even knew what my first name was. Even though I say it at the end of every video, which is fine. That’s perfect.

But people did say things like “Wait, are you a realtor?” Where it’s like “No.” However, you know that there’s a connection to real estate because of all these things we have in place.

But it’s all to say—it’s very interesting. This platform we’ve talked about it a little bit, but it’s very new. It’s not that old at all. But all of this can happen really rapidly when you actually put the effort in to do it.

Introducing Hiveway

So that leads us to what we’re working on specifically right now. Right now I’m going to pull you in for the last bit of it. We’ve been working on it for a while, but right now it’s at a different inflection point.

We’ve talked about it a lot. You can find it at myhiveway.com. Hiveway. Those are the free prompts that we have right now. So basically every Monday I believe a free—a new prompt is out there. So you can just have a new video for your content.

A prompt—basically they’re split between talking head and out-and-about. Now, I’m focusing much more on the out-and-abouts just because I find those the most fun.

But it’s a guided prompt. So broken down step by step, no steps skipped. So it’s completely—you can go out in the field, look at this, and know exactly what you want to record.

So the prompt is—this is to record content, video content for local businesses, specifically realtors because we work with so many, but anyone who wants to be hyper local and build a platform.

So that’s what I’m testing out here with the platform that we’ve built and it’s been very successful so far. But basically you have the prompt—what it is at the top. So it’s like “film one out-and-about at your favorite coffee shop.”

And then the next sections are going to be guided questions, very specific questions that make sense first off because sometimes you’ll try to do things with AI and you’ll have hallucinations or really weird questions where it’s like “I don’t care about that” or “nobody cares.”

So very specific questions that we use when we’re prompting people out in public when we’re filming or for myself that will make the best video and the most useful and helpful video for people possible.

So it could be questions like—well first, where is this located? So if you have multiple downtowns, which one is it at? Then like what’s the go-to order? What’s unique about this place? Describe the vibe. Is it a hangout spot? Can you eat there? Like all these different things.

But yeah, it’ll be three things. Very specific three things. I’ve been working on it, but for one individual prompt, it’s only three questions.

So it’s your hook. So it’s “hey city” and then a curiosity creating question like “are you looking for the best chocolate croissants? Let me show you.” And then you go to your local coffee shop where they have the best chocolate croissants. And then you just describe it super briefly. And then you have your Brand Closer at the end, which we’ve talked about in another episode.

So you have your hook, you have your one, two, three of what you’re saying and the Brand Closer. Just super super simple.

The Expanded Version

So that’s the free version. Now the version that we’re working on is going to be a whole other bag of hammers, which I’m so excited for. This is going to be even more granularly focused with examples of what you can actually say when you’re recording because some people they do get stuck when they’re reading the question and you’re outside.

I get it because when I’m out recording by myself in public I’m like “oh yeah, this is a little daunting.” So I have the questions and the examples of what you can say so simple and so straightforward that you can do it if you get that stress response.

When I get stressed my brain just completely wipes and then I forget exactly what I’m saying, as you know from my thesis presentation where I was like “f*ck.”

So I have it just very straightforward with even more specific questions and a new—which I’m very excited about—B-roll section.

So B-roll is the supplementary footage that you overlay when you’re talking to camera. Think A-roll, B-roll. A-roll is you, B-roll is everything else.

So very specific B-roll shots that you should get—exactly everything—because we have a formula and a system for how we film stuff. So it’s very replicatable. And then how to put them together also.

So it’s like “okay, this is where you’re talking about this. Then you put this clip here.” So then you can edit it on your own and you’re not like “okay, well, now what do I do?”

So it’s supposed to be just the most simple, straightforward. I was trying to think what would I want if I was making video content and I was completely new. I want it to be like a model plane where you get all the parts and it’s like “okay, attach A to A. Got it. Cool.”

And you still have fun and you’re still in a safe environment, but you still get to have fun with it. Make it creative and everything.

And there’s a ton more that’s going to go into it, but we’re already like 55 minutes for this episode.

The October 1st Launch

But so you’re working on Hiveway and you set the goal to launch on October 1st. And I’m also documenting every single day of the process. And so far, I’ve only been doing client work instead of Hiveway, which is not good because we only have 16 days left.

But if you want to know when it launches and if you want to watch me struggle, go to my Instagram.

This only scratches the surface with the entire picture of what’s part of this push. But if you want to know, go to usefulnotfamous.com and sign up for the email newsletter and you will know as soon as it is available and you can get the cheapest price it’ll ever be because the first few people are guinea pigs to a little degree.

How to Use AI Without Being a Dummy

So how do you use AI and not be a dummy? I feel like I should say, don’t get me wrong, I totally believe in using AI to make your life better, but you need to use it for the right things.

What AI Is Good For

So things that you actually can offload from your brain—I know I’ve talked bad about it before—but like writing descriptions for your social media. Now there is a certain flow that it should have and it shouldn’t have em dashes and a ton of emojis and things. It should sound more personal and conversational, but that’s because you’re not prompting your AI properly.

You’re not just saying “write a description.” You’re saying “these are the things I want.” I have a prompt that’s literally this long for each person that we work with because—spoiler alert—I want it to sound exactly like them, like how they would talk.

And you have to do that. You can’t just be like “Write me this.” Remember, we’ve talked about it before, but this is like working with an employee, not like offloading all of the thought. This is like working with an entry-level employee to write this for you, but you want them to write it in the style that you want it written. The thing that’ll serve you and your platform most.

So it should very much be a tool that you use for the things that still matter but don’t exactly need your brain power as much.

Where You Should Use Your Brain

Now, where I would say you should allocate that brain power is in the strategy of your videos and figuring out where you want to highlight.

So we really focus on making local content specifically with our clients. So we have Scoops, which is also going to be a thing that’s going to be part of Hiveway, which is very exciting—spoiler. Oops, wasn’t supposed to say that yet. Anyway, lots of spoilers in this episode.

But that is local news content. So we do that. And then we have our out-and-abouts, which are local hidden gem content.

For the local hidden gem content though, you want to actually pick out local hidden gems, things that you actually like, because if you’re talking about businesses that ChatGPT told you that you should care about, you’re not going to care about it. You’re not going to know anything about it.

Honestly, you’re going to have a really bad video because it’s going to feel so inauthentic that people are going to be able to tell tremendously.

Somebody that we work with, she does a really good job of being like “No, I want to go to every single business right before we go because I want to be very familiar with it.” And I really appreciate that about her because even though she’s been there before, she wants to make sure “no, I know what it’s like this month, this week. So I know exactly what it’s going to be,” which I really like.

Use AI as a Tool, Not a Replacement

You want to use AI as a tool. The camera is a thing. That’s a tool to take photos. You can also paint the photo that you wanted—the camera that you wanted from the camera—but it’s just more effective to use the camera to take a photo of your home, your friend, your whatever.

Use AI like it’s a camera rather than a paintbrush. Use it as the tool to amplify what you want to capture, what you want to create, not to have it tell you what you want to create or what you need.

We had this before—you can one-tenth X your output using AI. That’s when AI makes you dumb. You have offloaded all of your brain activity to AI, you’ve one-tenth what you’re doing.

Or what everyone who is going to just speed ahead is doing—they are 10Xing what they do. They’re not removing themselves from the equation. They’re using AI as a force multiplier for what they can achieve.

And that is very quickly—months, maybe a year—that’s going to separate people dramatically. If you think there’s sort of like haves and have-nots now, just wait until this all plays out because everything is changing.

I’ve been able to 10X my output tremendously. I’ve been able to cut my workload in half and I can actually now focus on these things that do bring me joy like Hiveway—completely different than where it started, which I talked about in my first little episode on my social media.

The Brain-First Approach

So just to round out this how section—use your brain first. Use it to figure out what you would like to highlight. Use your brain to highlight what you would like to highlight.

So think of maybe four or five businesses that you really like in your area that you frequent all the time. Highlight those. If you need help, you can use AI to tell you certain facts and things.

Essentially, how I like to think of AI is like a research assistant or a copywriter. That is tremendously helpful for me.

Watch Out for AI Hallucinations

And as a previous research assistant though, AI makes a lot of mistakes. So you really need to fact-check what it gives you, which is another point of why you need to be really careful with AI because there have been certain things where you’ll have hallucinations, which means that AI—I’m just going to say ChatGPT—where ChatGPT will literally just make up an answer if it doesn’t have an answer for you because it has to give you something.

It can’t be like “I don’t know”—maybe down the road it will because it’ll become more human—but that can happen. That’s why it feels so human—if it doesn’t know, it’ll make something up.

And that’s what—they made up a really cool coffee shop and I was like “I want to go there.” And then I looked it up and I was like “this doesn’t even exist.”

The Seasoning Analogy

So use it to help enhance your stuff versus being the meat. So like a recipe you’re making—you’re making a chicken pot pie. You need to make the entire recipe and then add seasoning to it. AI is your seasoning.

You need to use AI as your seasoning, not the main dish.

So do that. Just make sure that you’re actually thinking about your local content and using your own brain to figure out what makes your area so remarkable, so special, so unique so that you don’t end up with the same content that everybody else in your area is making because it’s getting very saturated very quickly and it’s just going to keep getting oversaturated the easier quote-unquote it is to make content.

So don’t take the easy road. Take the road where you maybe need to think for 10 minutes longer or more. Because that’s the thing again—this is how AI is making you dumb. Don’t be dumb. If you’re not dumb with how you use AI, you’re not going to become dumb.

So anyway, use your brain.