I used this technique first when typing out the strips during my train rides from Bandra to Churchgate. I had an opportunity to re-apply it recently when we needed to tag hundreds of photographs based on a set of criteria.
Here’s how you can do this. Note: This works only on Windows.
STEP 1: Create a new Excel workbook and save it as an Excel macro-enabled workbook. (Note: When opening it again, you need to enable macros)
STEP 2: Open File > Options (Alt-F-T), go to Customize Ribbon. Under “Customize the Ribbon”, enable the “Developer” menu.
STEP 3: In Developer > Insert > ActiveX Controls, select Image and draw a rectangle from A1 to J10. (Resize it later.)
STEP 4: By default, this will be called Image1. In any case, note down the name from the Name box on the top left.
STEP 5: In cells A11 onwards, add paths to file names.
STEP 6: Click Developer > Visual Basic (Alt-F11), go to ThisWorkbook, and paste this code:
Option Explicit
Private Sub Workbook_SheetSelectionChange(ByVal Sh As Object, ByVal Target As Excel.Range)
Dim img As String
img = Sh.Cells(Target.Row, 1).Value
If (img <> "" And img <> "file") Then ActiveSheet.Image1.Picture = LoadPicture(img)
End Sub
Replace ActiveSheet.Image1 with ActiveSheet.(whatever) based on your image name in Step 4.
STEP 7: Select Developer > Design Mode. Click on Image1. Then select Developer > Properties. In this panel, under PictureSizeMode, choose 3 - fmPictureSizeModeZoom to fit the picture.
Now scroll through the rows. The images will change.
Every time I get annoyed at people, I remind myself to be more like ChatGPT. Specifically:
Don’t get annoyed. Be patient.
Encourage them.
Step back and show them the big picture.
(Then I get annoyed at myself for getting annoyed.)
Today, I analyzed how exactly ChatGPT is different from me. So, I took a pitch document I co-authored with ChatGPT.
Section A: Authored by Anand
WHAT DO WE NEED?
We are looking for API access to (SYSTEM) via the REST API as an Agent role (read/respond to emails). Specifically, access via a bearer token.
This would be accessed by a single application developed by a team of 3 developers and 1 business analyst. None of them have access to (SYSTEM) today.
WHY DO WE NEED THIS, AND WHY SO SOON?
We need this to classify emails automatically, as they arrive, into categories such as “non-value-add” (e.g. Thank you, Out-of-office, etc.)
We’d line access today, please. Currently, we are processing XX,XXX non-value-add emails per month. Each day of delay leads to a processing waste of ~XX emails per day. At current volumes, this will save ~$XX,XXX per annum.
IS THERE ANY OTHER WAY?
To access emails in real-time, this is the only option. (We’re ruling out web scraping.)
(SYSTEM) rule-based closure won’t work. It’s based on keyword search, not semantic matches. For example, “Thank you” is present in non-value-add emails as well as follow-up questions. Multi-lingual matches are a challenge. So, though (SYSTEM) currently closes emails with rules, 1 out of 6 emails that are NOT closed already are non-value-add.
This cannot be done via (SYSTEM) or any other BI system because it involves accessing the data in real-time as well as responding via (SYSTEM). This needs to be steady-state access, not one-time, since we want to classify emails real-time.
HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE?
Based on our past experience, this would take about X weeks to prototype, X weeks to develop, and X weeks to test. We should have the application deployed in X months.
Section B: Authored by ChatGPT
WHAT’S THE IMPACT IF WE DON’T MOVE FORWARD?
Quantitatively, continuing without this solution wastes resources on XXX non-essential emails daily, costing $XX,XXX yearly. Delays in customer responses will ensue.
Qualitatively, lack of automation strains customer service, risking employee burnout and diminished customer experience.
WHAT’S THE PRIORITY (MOSCOW)?
(SYSTEM) API access via REST as an Agent role with a bearer token is a “MUST HAVE”. Alternative methods like scraping (SYSTEM) are impractical due to high effort and maintenance.
WHAT’S THE OUTCOME IF WE MOVE FORWARD?
Financially, securing API access saves $XX,XXX annually by cutting manual email sorting. Efficiency gains reduce operational costs and free resources for strategic tasks.
Strategically, automating email classification boosts customer satisfaction and response times, establishing leadership in service innovation. Long-term, it enables data-driven insights into customer behaviour, improving decisions and customer service scalability.
Analysis
I fed these to ChatGPT and asked: “You are an English professor evaluating an essay. Compare the writing styles of the 2 sections. They’re written by different authors. List the major differences in writing style.“
Here’s what it said (roughly):
Area
Anand
ChatGPT
Structure
Direct, concise, with specifics
Broader perspective and implications
Focus
Detailing the process
Benefits and consequences
Detailing
Specific, providing clear picture
General, providing implications
Tone
Conveys urgency
Reflective rather than urgent
Approach
Problem-solving oriented
Outcome-oriented
Yeah, that’s definitely me on the left.
I like the direct, concise, specific part. I plan to add the “broader perspective”, “implications”, and “outcome-orientation” to my life.
Postscript
Jaidev pointed out that this is confirmation bias. He asked ChatGPT for the similarities in the writings. It said both are clear, direct, structured, specific, quantitative, and strategic. So, if you ask for differences, you’ll get them, even if they’re marginal.
I now need to learn (and write about) framing questions well!
text-embedding-ada-002 used to give high cosine similarity between texts. I used to consider 85% a reasonable threshold for similarity. I almost never got a similarity less than 50%.
For example, take these 5 words: “apple”, “orange”, “Facebook”, “Jamaica”, “Australia”. Here is the similarity between every pair of words across the 3 models:
For our words, new text-embedding-3-* models have an average similarity of ~43% while the older text-embedding-ada-002 model had ~85%.
Today, I would use 45% as a reasonable threshold for similarity with the newer models. For example, “apple” and “orange” have a similarity of 45-47% while Jamaica and apple have a ~20% similarity.
Here’s a notebook with these calculations. Hope that gives you a feel to calibrate similarity thresholds.
I was having a voice conversation with ChatGPT (about the log probabilities of tokens on LLMs, if you’re curious) when I was rudely interrupted by an auto rikshaw rapidly honking at me. “Honk honk honk honk honk” in rapid succession.
Not unusual. Mildly annoying. The street was empty. The auto was empty. The traffic policeman was visible. I gave way and carried on.
A few seconds later, I heard a voice in my ear.
“It sounds like you’re in a good mood! Anything else you’d like to discuss or know more about?”
ChatGPT was still listening (perhaps to background noise) and responding. But I didn’t realize what random noise it thought put me in a good mood. Here’s what I saw on the chat window.
ChatGPT had transcribed the auto’s honking to “Hee hee hee hee hee!”
A client once told me, while visiting Hyderabad, that “these honks in India are a language of their own.” If ChatGPT is to be believed, the autos are laughing at us.
This is, incidentally, the very first time ChatGPT added an exclamation point to my words. I’ve never managed to achieve that so far. No matter how emphatically I spoke.
Also, I’d never have learnt this walking in the streets of Singapore. Friends have warned me about the dangers of long walks on Indian roads. Here’s an example of the lessons we learn — if only we keep our eyes and ears (and microphones) open.
Postscript
While cycling in Singapore, ChatGPT interprets the sounds very differently. At least twice, it transcribed the traffic noise into “Thank you. Thank you.” Clearly even traffic noise in Singapore is more graceful than in Chennai!
I looked at how Gramener uses ChatGPT Plus by evaluating 600+ chats asked over 3 months from Oct 2023 to Jan 2024.
The team asks 6 questions a day. We don’t track who or how many actively use ChatGPT Plus. This also excludes personal ChatGPT accounts. Still, 6/day is low for an entire team put together.
The questions fall into 8 categories.
Category
%
Excel, data exploration & analysis
25%
Text extraction and summarization
13%
HTML, CSS, or JavaScript code
13%
Python code
13%
LLMs, AI and use cases
9%
OCR and image analysis
9%
Generate images, logos, and designs
7%
General knowledge, policy & environment
5%
Audio and translation
5%
Here are some questions from each category – to give you an idea of emergent ChatGPT Plus usage.
Excel, data exploration & analysis (25%)
Excel clean and merge. There are 2 worksheets in this excel with data, can you clean up the data and merge the data in both the sheets
Excel CO2 Data Analysis. You are an expert Data Analyst who is capable of extracting insights out of data. Analyze this sheet and let me know the findings
Excel Chi-Square Analysis Guide. how to perform chi square analysis in excel
Log Data Insights & KPIs. Looking at the columns from this excel, what kind of insights are possible, what are key KPIs to be looked at
Text extraction and summarization (13%)
Complaint Investigation Summary. The following is the summary of an internal investigation for a customer complaint. Now this internal summary is to be paraphrased (in 3-4 lines) as part of a closure
Extracting Tables from RTF. Can you write a script to extract the tables from this document
Extract PDF Font Details. Extract text formatting information from this document. Especially find font styles, families and sizes.
HTML, CSS, or JavaScript code (13%)
HTML/CSS Chart Template. Give me HTML, CSS and chart code for this design.
CSS Font Stack: Explanation. Explain this CSS font convention: Arial, Helvetica, Segoe UI, sans-serif
Checkbox Validation with JavaScript. In HTML form, I have a set of checkboxes. How do I write the form so that at least one of them being checked is mandatory?
Prevent Text Wrapping CSS. <span class="text">Chief Communications Officer</span> I need CSS such the text inside should not wrap create new line
ReactJS App with Routing. Give me developed version using ReactJS use react router for sidebar section navigation to the pages use Tailwind css for styling. Use styled components for conditional …
Python code (13%)
Python Code Documentation Guide. Can you generate documentation for a project code written in python?
Linux Commands for Python. Give me list of linux commands to work on python coding
Code explanation request. What’s this code about? …
FastAPI Async Testing. Write a fastapi code and a python client to test the asynchronous nature of the fastapi package.
Streamlit App for Translation. Given the following python code, give me a simple streamlit app that takes file upload and converts that into a target language: …
An interesting sub-topic was interview question generation.
Python Decorator for Database Queries. Create one medium level question for Decorators in python Industryy usecase specific with solution
LLM, AI and use cases (9%)
LLMs for Data “What Ifs”. You are an LLM Expert. Can you tell me how can we leverage LLM for implementing What IF scenarios on Data?
LLMs: Current Challenges & Concerns. what are current challenges with LLMs
LLM Applications in Marketing. Show LLM applications for the marketing function of a music company.
Gen AI usage. What industries are using Gen AI the most
Best LLMs in 2023. Search the internet for the most recent LLMs and list the best LLMs in terms of performance
Best Image Classification Models. suggest best models to tell what there in the image
OCR and image analysis (9%)
Browser history OCR. This is a screenshot of my browser history. Convert that to text. Categorize these into common topics.
Extracted C Code. This image contains C code. Extract it.
Image text extraction and annotation. Extract the text from this image and annotate the boundaries of the text
Detecting Document Image Orientation. oreientation detection of documnet image
AI Project with OpenCV & YOLO. Consider yourself as Open CV and Yolo expert and help me with AI project
Image Correction Techniques. what are the approaches we have in computer vision where my image is tilted or rotated in reverse or image is not in readable format
Generate images, logos, and designs (7%)
Google Chacha and ChatGPT Bhatija. Generate an image of Google Chacha and ChatGPT Bhatija
Regenerative Systems Group Image. Generate an Image with below context > “A group of people interested in Regenerative systems. The focus is on reusing food, energy and mental health”
Twitter Reply Icons Design. Give me three icons: icon16.png, icon48.png, icon128.png for an extension that I’m building that suggests replies to tweets
Generate flowcharts. Make a flowchart of the underlying working of a web app. Here’s how it works. 1. The user uploads a document – a PDF or an image. They then select the language that …
Create Animated GIF from Photos. I have 4 photos I want to make an animated gif out of them. How can i do that?
Climate Impact Illustration. An illustration showcasing the impact of climate change on daily life, focusing on a rural setting near the coast. In the foreground, a small farm is visibly struggling, …
General knowledge, policy & environment (5%)
Design Thinking Overview. What is Design thinking
Arthashastra. What can Arthashastra teach us about modern politics?
Community Impact on Habits. Is there research to suggest the impact of community on habit building?
Focus at Age 28. What should a 28 year old focus on?
Superconductors. Explain superconductors like I’m five years old.
Climate Career: Impactful Choices. You a career counsellor at a University campus. You want to create 4 to 5 talking points for students to consider a career in Climate space.
Sustainability Division Vision. I run a software outsourced product development company. I want to start a new division that focuses on sustainability services offerings. Please draft a vision…
Audio and translation (5%)
Audio Timestamp Mapping. timestamp mapping for transcribed audio
Transcribe Lengthy Audio: Segment. Transcribe this audio file.
Traducción del MOU al Español. Translate this document to Spanish, and create a new translated document. Maintain text formatting.
Telugu Transcription into Hindi. Transcribe the following telugu text into hindi. You are supposed to transcribe, not translate. శ్రీనివాస పూజావిధానము …
GPT lacks native audio support. Does gpt support audio in audio out natively?
The Kingkiller Chronicle. I picked it up before a flight to London in 2014. Read it through the flight. Read it late into the night at our AirBnB. Skipped my workshop prep. Read it during the workshop breaks. Read it on the flight back. And I re-read it every year or two. The language is beautiful and the story gripping. I feel miserable this series isn’t complete.
Andy Weir’s books. Since my daughter re-reads The Martian (laughing loudly), I picked up Project Hail Mary. It’s a brilliant depiction of alien physiology and communication, with a weird kind of humour I love.
Blake Crouch’s books. The two I read were both time-travel related and I love that genre. These do a great job of exploring some of the deeper implications of time-travel.
The Year of Sanderson. Brandon Sanderson’s kickstarter raised $41m for 4 books this year (mostly Cosmere). The stories themselves were OK but the hints they drop about the Cosmere are invaluable.
Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa. After Death Note, it felt like a let-down when it started. A mundane story. Then it grew funny. Showed shades of a much deeper story. I’m mid-way through the series and I’m hooked.
The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. I took more notes for this book than most other books combined. It’s a hard read but worth it. Each chapter can be read independently. I particularly love how he uses “As a student of human nature…” and truly becomes one.
Learn Like a Pro by Barbara Oakley ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. The best book for practical tactics on how to learn better, with excellent tips such as active recall which helps you remember what you learned. I’ve been applying parts of this for a year now.
What If? 2 by Randall Munroe ⭐⭐⭐⭐. A continuation of Randall Munroe’s brilliant answers to absurd scientific questions, ranging from riding helicopter blades to lava lava-lamps.
No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings ⭐⭐⭐⭐. A systematic approach to the principles behind the Netflix culture — and how the elements fit together.
