Stay ConnectedThe Every Podcast is Every’s flagship show. Co-hosts Dan Shipper and Natalia Quintero talk with founders, researchers, writers, and operators about what they’re building and how they use AI in their own work. The show also takes you behind the scenes at Every. We share how our team is using and exploring AI, including what we’re trying, what’s working, and what we’re learning along the way.
Formerly known as AI & I.
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TL;DR: Today we’re releasing a new episode of our podcast How Do You Use ChatGPT? I go in-depth with Notion research engineer Linus Lee on how he uses ChatGPT and Notion AI to maximize creative control. Watch on X, YouTube, or Spotify.
You might think that being an AI researcher would mostly involve solving complicated programming problems and thinking through mathematical equations. Instead, a big part of the job is rewriting parts of your prompts in ALL CAPS in order to make sure the AI model you’re working with follows your directions. “All caps works!” Linus Lee told me in this interview. “If you look at OpenAI's system prompts for a lot of their tools, all caps works.”
Linus is a research engineer at Notion who works on its AI team, prototyping new experiences, like a Q&A chatbot. He is a deep thinker who is obsessed with building AI that enables human creativity and agency. He came on the show to talk about how AI might augment our thinking, how he thinks about prompting to get the best results, and how he uses ChatGPT and Notion AI in his work and life.
I first interviewed him a year ago, when he showed off dozens of AI prototypes he’d been building to try to understand the future of this technology. Our latest interview is a mixture of theory and practice. Linus talks about how the tools we use shape the work we can create and what the future of AI-driven interfaces might be. We watch him demo personal tools he’s built, like an AI chatbot that he communicates with over iMessage. And we peek over his shoulder to see his chats with ChatGPT to understand how he talks to it to get the best results.
Here’s a taste of what we talk about. Read on for more analysis from me at the bottom.
What do you use ChatGPT for? Have you found any interesting or surprising use cases? We want to hear from you—and we might even interview you. Reply here to talk to me!
Miss an episode? Catch up on my recent conversations with writer Nat Eliason and Gumroad CEO Sahil Lavingia and learn how they use ChatGPT.
How Nat Eliason uses ChatGPT to write books: Nat Eliason is a shape-shifter. He’s a writer with a book deal from Random House, a crypto trader, a Roam Research aficionado, a marketer, a book podcaster, a parent, and a seed oil iconoclast. He's amassed thousands of newsletter subscribers, 70,000 followers on X, and 110,000 on TikTok. His secret weapon for all of his exploring? ChatGPT. Nat took me through why he uses it every day for his work and his life. In this interview we talk about using ChatGPT for: Identifying his taste in writing. He uses ChatGPT to help him identify the kind of writing he likes, so that he can produce more of it. Finding new books to read for inspiration. ChatGPT helps him find writers and books that he never would've encountered through Googling or in his daily life. Generating story outlines and character descriptions. He uses ChatGPT to help him outline the sci-fi novel he's writing and learn how to create vivid descriptions. Settling bar bets. Air in the atmosphere contains carbon—which can technically be converted into diamond. So, how much air would be required to make a diamond? It's the kind of thing you might argue about over drinks with a friend—and exactly the kind of question ChatGPT is built to answer. Reading the news. Nat doesn't read the news. But every once in a while he wants to know what's going on about a particular topic. ChatGPT is the perfect news summarizer. Generating recipes. Nat is a frequent chef. ChatGPT is his recipe companion: surfacing ideas, and easily modifying them based on what he has at hand and his family's dietary preferences.
About the show
I believe that ChatGPT is the most important creative tool of the decade. I think it can help us write better, create art, efficiently ship products, build great businesses, make smart decisions, and even learn something about ourselves,.
But it’s still so early. Most of us don’t even really know how to use ChatGPT. We have a feeling that it’s powerful, interesting, and important—but we haven’t figured out how to incorporate it into our lives.
There are a few people, though, who are living in the future. They have the time and curiousity to use ChatGPT in their everyday lives, taking the opportunity to make the technology work for them. In this way, they light the way for everyone else.
That’s what this interview series, How I Use ChatGPT, is all about. We go in-depth with the most interesting people in the world to learn concrete ways they are already using ChatGPT. It won’t be theoretical—or limited to audio: we’ll screen-share and see their actual prompts and responses, so you can see how ChatGPT helps them perform better at work and improve their lives—one conversation at a time.
About this episode
My first guest is Sahil Lavingia, the co-founder and CEO of Gumroad, one of the largest platforms for creators to sell their work online. He shared how he uses ChatGPT for:
Buying a building. He wants to buy a New York City hangout for Gumroad employees and customers, so he asked ChatGPT to research the history of real estate in NYC, suggest which neighborhoods might be best to target, generate questions for brokers, and even detail what the design of a particular property might look like.
Writing tweets. Sahil is a prolific Twitter/X user. He often uses ChatGPT to help him flesh out an idea. He says, “I [start] with a tweet, which is like a thesis, and then I just say, ‘Add three to four paragraphs to make the point compelling—also suggest more examples.’” We explore his precise process for using ChatGPT to help him brainstorm short tweets and longer essays in this episode.
Pressure-testing ideas. For Sahil, ChatGPT is like upgrading his peripheral vision. It lets him see around the corners, ask better questions of himself and other people, and avoid poor decisions. He told me, “I think a lot of people sort of delude themselves into thinking they have [good ideas]… I think that one of the most useful things about [ChatGPT] is it focuses your research on what actually matters.” It’s the ultimate tool to help him think better.
Also in this episode: how ChatGPT could have helped Sahil save $70 million, how he thinks it will improve the most-talented creatives, and why he thinks—in the age of AI—people have no excuse for not knowing the answer to something anymore.
Timestamps:
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