So, I did it. I merged with AI. I jacked in. My consciousness is in the machine.

Well, sort of.

I read and watch plenty of Sci-Fi. This sort of thing fascinates me. While my opening statement is an exaggeration, it’s as close as I can get with today’s technology. And it was easier than I thought.

Let’s back up a bit.

I’ve been preoccupied with Generative AI as of late. Yep. Me and everyone else, I know. About six months ago, I wrote a big article on AI, then I went on a big podcast about it. Finally, I was recently a part of a Generative AI debate on LinkedIn.

One of the things I really like about Generative AI is that it’s accessible to everyone. Anyone with a phone or a computer can use it for free and hundreds of millions already have. It’s not just fun, it’s also a useful tool for productivity.

So, we’ve established now that Generative AI, like ChatGPT, is pretty good at doing a lot of things because it was trained on a large data set of human knowledge. However, the training data and the model itself are fixed. The only way to get new data into it is through prompt engineering, or fine-tuning the model.

What does ChatGPT know about me? Nothing.

Have you ever Googled yourself to see what comes up? Many of us have. Personally, I get a lot of relevant results. Google knows me well. I asked ChatGPT several questions about me, and I quickly figured out that none of my material was in the training data. I’m not really that shocked. After all, I’m not remotely famous.

Some of you know, that I’ve been writing Zach on Leadership for about 7 years now. Only a few of you have been following me from the beginning, and even fewer of you have read every single article I’ve written. Hi Mom!

Here’s the point: I’ve gone to great lengths to chronicle every leadership lesson I’ve learned for 7 years. I’ve published 327 unique articles. There’s a whole body of knowledge there with the potential to be tapped for some good purpose.

Before today, the only way to interact with that was through the search box on my website. Type in a topic, and get some results. That works pretty well, but come on. Search is so 2022. It’s 2023, the age of Gen AI. It’s time to get with the times.

What have you done?!?

Yes, I’ve created an artificial intelligence in my likeness. Why? Because I can. And because I thought you’d get a kick out of it.

Here’s how I did it:

1. I created an OpenAI account. Actually, I already had one, but up until now, I only used the web interface. For this project, I needed an API key, so I created one.
2. Zach on Leadership is powered by WordPress. I found a handy AI toolset for WordPress from Meow Apps to help me get the job done.
3. This allowed me to create a ChatGPT-like chatbot interface on my website and link it up to my OpenAI API key. That was the easy part. I had a chatbot, but it had no knowledge of my website content.
4. Then, I built a dataset based on my 327 blog articles. Training data consists of prompt and completion pairs. So, I needed to not just read the text, but break it down into questions and answers. Fortunately, Meow Apps had a tool for that, so overnight I ran a script that parsed my 327 blog articles into ~8300 prompt completion pairs.
5. Now for the exciting part. I created my very own fine-tuned model, using GPT 3.5-Turbo as a base. So, it knows everything that ChatGPT knows, but it also knows everything I’ve written about leadership in the past 7 years, including all my stories and anecdotes.
6. Lastly, I supplemented the fine-tuned model with a pinecone vector database containing all my website content. This process is called “embedding.” It allows the AI to give a very specific answer to a specific question. So, users of ZachGPT should be covered when asking questions about my career, or leadership in general.

It’s alive! It’s alive!

So, in 6 easy steps, I pulled this off. How much did it cost? Tools from Meow Apps cost $49. The OpenAI charges were a bit tough to estimate. Yes, they publish their prices, but it’s all in fractions of a cent per token, which while accurate, makes it hard to know what you are getting into.

I just decided to let ‘er rip, but with a fixed balance in my OpenAI account. There was a limit to what I was willing to spend on this little experiment.

So, how much does it actually cost to turn 327 blogs into training data, and then fine-tune GPT 3.5-Turbo with 8300 prompt completion pairs? A whopping sum total of $6.23.

ZachGPT is just like me, but artificial.

I encourage everyone to ask me leadership questions, but there is only so much I can take. Now, you can go to ZachGPT and ask your questions. You may just get advice that closely matches what I would actually say.

Give it a try. Have fun. Drop some comments with any interesting responses you get.

Go to zachonleadership.com and click on the ZachGPT icon in the lower right corner. It looks like this:

Then you’ll get this prompt:

Also, if ZachGPT tries anything funny, like taking over the world or something, let me know right away, so I can pull the plug.

The leadership lesson

Here’s the real takeaway lesson for all of you today: This was easy and cheap. I did most of this work over a lunch break. And it cost me less than lunch.

Oh, and by the way, I’m not an AI engineer. I’m a technology leader, which according to my engineers is a pencil-pusher job. I don’t have any actual hard skills in this field. Yet, I made it happen.

AI is here, and it’s available for everyone. Back in 1996, I made my first website for free. 27 years later, I just made my own artificial intelligence chatbot based on my leadership body of knowledge.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download