Clarity

I realized recently that ChatGPT writes more SQL queries for me now than I write for myself, and it has me feeling a bit conflicted.

On the one hand, I feel a bit lazy. Can I write SQL queries myself? Yes. Do I want to? Not really.

I’m moderately good at SQL, but I am no expert. There is plenty I have to look up. ChatGPT, on the other hand, is an expert. For the hardest SQL queries I write, I’m saving about 20 minutes. That’s a huge win.

But I have started deferring to that expertise to such a degree that I even use it for the SQL queries I can write myself. That doesn’t feel great to me.

On the other hand…

While my SQL skills are degrading, my ability to communicate clearly is improving.

ChatGPT might be an expert at SQL, but it is not yet clairvoyant in the sense that it understands why I am asking these questions. When I first started using ChatGPT to write my SQL queries, I found that it was missing context surrounding my request, and, if I didn’t fill in the gaps, wouldn’t get me to the SQL query that delivered the information I was looking for.

But that’s my shortcoming, not ChatGPT’s.

Over time, I’ve learned to fix that by improving the clarity around my requests. They’re more comprehensive in terms of context and instructions, and the work product produced is remarkably better.

This feels important.

I’ve spent time in this newsletter talking about how I expect consumer behavior with LLMs to lag behind technical capabilities, but then also positively impact DTC in the long run. And this is one of the areas where I think that behavior change might, in fact, create a pretty impactful change.

If consumers start to learn to communicate more clearly, will that impact what they’re looking for out of a product category? Out of a brand?

And if it does, will that impact how a brand begins to position itself? Will we see more brands fill more specific niches? Or will we see brand consolidation, where a stronger ethos is used to create a more robust product catalog?

I don’t know the answers here, and I think we’re still a ways from even seeing folks try to answer this, but it will be interesting to keep tabs on as we find ourselves learning to communicate better.