Aioli

I recently had the opportunity to help a family-owned catering business in San Francisco tackle a common industry challenge: pricing discrepancies on third-party platforms. These platforms, while essential for orders and marketing, often introduce unintended issues - slipping in free items or altering negotiated prices. For small businesses, this can significantly impact the bottom line. The owners were seeking a solution but were hesitant to adopt new software. That's where custom automation came in. Using Make, I built a tailored system that works with their existing tools: -AI-powered order verification -Instant email alerts for pricing mismatches -Automated order calendars and prep lists for their kitchen -Delivery route optimizer This custom approach means: -No new software to learn -Seamless integration with their current workflow -A solution precisely fitted to their needs The impact? Hours saved on manual checks, reduced errors, and more time for the owners to focus on their craft, customers, and family at home. It's a great example of how targeted automation can level the playing field for small businesses in the catering industry, without the need for complex new systems.

Talking about Aioli and giving away some of my AI secrets on The Good CFO podcast, out now! 🎤

Anthropic Claude just released their app in the iOS App Store! Make sure to download the authentic one (there's a lot of fakes on there): https://lnkd.in/gNhrqyXm

Good news, here's what you DO NOT need to learn as a business leader who wants to benefit from AI: ❌ RAG ❌ Python ❌ Langchain ❌ Llamaindex ❌ Autogen vs. babyagi Things you SHOULD learn: ✅ Understand generative AI capabilities ✅ Map those capabilities to your business problems ✅ Design and communicate AI use cases ✅ Know key players and tools in the market ✅ Experiment and iterate AI is moving fast. Tools come and go. Don't burn yourself out by trying to master something super technical.

ChatGPT now has memory across all chats! We've been waiting for this one... ⏩ Continuous Conversations: ChatGPT can now carry forward information from past interactions, making each conversation smoother and more connected. ⏩ Adaptive Learning: As you interact more, ChatGPT customizes its responses based on accumulated knowledge of your preferences and topics of interest. ⏩ User-Controlled Memory: Full transparency and control are at your fingertips. You can view, modify, or delete the information remembered by ChatGPT, or even turn off this feature entirely. A huge step forward in making AI more seamless and intuitive!

As AI continues to advance and integrate into our daily lives, it's crucial to approach these developments with a critical eye and a desire to understand their implications. 🧐 In the latest edition of my newsletter, Aioli, I aim to provide you with a balanced and insightful perspective on the AI landscape. 📩 TODAY'S SPREAD: -The concept of "The Button" and its potential impact on creativity and work -The significance of open source AI models and their role in making AI more accessible -Using ChatGPT as a tool for navigating complex ethical dilemmas -Reader Questions: A new segment addressing your AI-related queries Through thoughtful analysis and discussion, my goal is to help you navigate the age of AI with a clearer understanding of its potential benefits and drawbacks. 🧭 I'd love to hear your thoughts on the challenges and opportunities presented by AI. Share your experiences or insights in the comments below, and feel free to pass this along to anyone who might appreciate a thoughtful approach to understanding AI. 💡 #AI #CriticalThinking #FutureOfWork #OpenSource #Ethics https://lnkd.in/ghn6M_s6

I'm in Texas this week for the solar eclipse (my parents happened to build a house in the path of totality!) and I've been Venetian-plastering their range hood with Italian Marmonino. I don't think this job will be replaced by AI anytime soon, but what do I know. In either event, I'm building skills in both departments. This week's Aioli newsletter spread: 📖 Aioli’s first Book Club Read: Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick 🤖 AI Agents, and why you should care 🎶 Spotify's AI-Powered Playlist Generator: Personalized Music for Every Occasion 💼 This Week's Top ChatGPT Use Case 🖼️ AI-Generated Photos of the Week https://lnkd.in/gjSBpksq

Reimagining the grocery store in a Japandi (Scandinavian Japanese) design aesthetic. What does your renovated grocery store look like? I made this image in 2 seconds in Midjourney. Check out the newsletter link below for the prompt. This week's Aioli newsletter is a short-but-still-sweet burst of AI bites because I’m traveling in Texas to see the solar eclipse 🕶 ☀ 🌚 TODAY’S SPREAD  🍌 AI Takes Aim at Tackling Food Waste 🤗 The tiny island nation that happens to be the center of the AI Boom 💼 This Week's Top ChatGPT Use Case 🖼️ AI-Generated Photos of the Week https://lnkd.in/dRvawjAP #AI #Sustainability #FoodWasteReduction #TechInnovation #Anguilla #Entrepreneurship #Startups #ChatGPT #ImageEditing #AIAutomation

There are so many opportunities for food and agriculture businesses to implement generative AI into their operational workflows that I might quite literally burst. 🤯 🤓 🌿 Having immersed myself in these tools and learning about the capacity of generative AI, coupled with my experience in food and agriculture, I have so many ideas for how companies can leverage these incredible tools to mitigate tedious tasks so that employees can free up their time to focus on high-level work that will help their business grow. In my professional experience, this is a pain point of a lot of smaller organizations that aren't able to delegate their work. Plus, it seems like this sector is getting largely ignored in the AI boom right now. 👨🍳 Here's an example: my brother is a chef and spends multiple hours a day on admin work, consolidating food costs, processing invoices and receipts from the butcher, the produce vendor, the dry ingredients supplier, you get the idea. This is typical chef-work, but it is tedious and a waste of his true talent - making delicious food. 📑 Because he has to spend so much time on admin work, he doesn't get to be in the kitchen as much as he'd like to to R&D for upcoming menu items, among other things. ⏲ Instead, generative AI-enabled automations can save him hours per day on these monotonous yet business-critical tasks. 🤖 With the automation I am building for him, invoices are automatically categorized, and he is able to interact with an AI chatbot to see where he can create efficiencies (like mitigating food waste, cutting costs for specific ingredients based on supplier competitive pricing, the list goes on and on). ❓ You might be wondering how this is different from existing software. Here's the secret sauce behind generative AI: Instead of just running reports that he would have to analyze and make deductions from, he can interact in natural language terms with the real-time data and knowledge base of his specific operation. 🥩 He can ask, "What is in the freezer at the moment, and what can I make for the upcoming private party dinner for 50 people?" The chatbot will return an answer as if it were a member of the kitchen team and had just hand-counted everything in the freezer itself, giving a full list of the contents of their walk-in freezer, and potential recipes based on the cuisine and menu of their restaurant. 🥘 I am currently working on an automation for a client in the catering industry that I can't wait to share publicly. I am keeping it under wraps until the model is completely built out, and also will be entering it into Google Gemini AI Hackathon as a solo entrant because I am so excited about the potential of this automation. ⏭ If you'd like to learn about ways to automate operational bottlenecks specific to your unique organization, email me at meg@spreadaioli.com ✌ #aiautomationagency #generativeai #automation

The Great AI Delivery Debate There's been a lot of heated discussion lately around "GPT wrappers" - companies packaging AI models into neat user interfaces and applications. Critics argue these are pointless since advanced users can just access the raw models directly. But I think the naysayers are missing the forest for the trees. Wrappers provide crucial last-mile delivery that unlocks powerful AI for the masses, not just talented prompt engineers. Think of it like the restaurant industry. Sure, seasoned chefs can buy raw ingredients and whip up gourmet meals at home. But for most people, the overhead of planning, prepping, and cooking from scratch is too high. Restaurants provide streamlined delivery of culinary expertise packaged up in a delightful experience. Similarly, while AI researchers and engineers may prefer the flexibility of accessing language models directly, the vast majority of people simply want the seamless delivery of AI's problem-solving capabilities through thoughtfully designed front-ends. The most successful wrappers, like the best restaurants, will compete on: ✨ Curating quality, safe "recipes" (prompts) for key use cases 🧑🍳 Employing prompt engineering mastery 🍽️ Polished, intuitive user experiences 📈 Trusting, reputable brands So don't dismiss wrappers as superfluous extra layers. They'll likely become the premier AI delivery channel by expertly bundling raw model capabilities into tasty, convenient packaged experiences for the market masses. The make-or-buy debate rages on, but restaurants and AI wrappers both thrive by delivering expertise seamlessly for those unwilling or unable to recreate it all from scratch. What do you think - are wrappers the future delivery mechanism to democratize AI? Let me know in the comments! #gptwrappers #ai