Working title: The "Second Brain"
I was talking with a family member today and he has been stuck in the same patterns. Not that I am perfect in any shape, form, or fashion—I'm still eating that pizza from three days ago. But he's been stuck in the same patterns, and there has to be something more to life.
I've been struggling recently with the meaning of life. I know everyone always talks about this, but for me, I think so much of what we do is centered around activation. Everyone I speak to is almost obsessed with waking up. Everything is energy drinks, running, asking: How much can we get done? Outcome?-What's the score of the big game?
Everyone I talk to, regardless of the type of person, seems to want to accomplish something. Even if accomplishing nothing. Sometimes, like in the "Office Space-esk" ethos, you have making time for yourself. Maybe your accomplishment is taking time to reconnect with nature— "touch grass." Sometimes these things are wanting to finish a personal project or find the perfect partner: {business, personal, just somebody to go gambling with at 2:00 a.m. on a Tuesday.}
We strive for connection and we look for accomplishment. These things tend to be central preoccupations which make us happy. This is not an overall treatise on happiness—hopefully, I can come up with something and make that later—but for now, I want to talk about my "second brain."
My second brain is this idea I had while half-awake this morning at 5:00 a.m., thinking it’d be really, really nice to talk to myself more or less. Not that I have anything interesting to say, but it would be really nice if I were really smart for once.
The overall idea involves ElevenLabs and their speech cloning technology. It makes things really interesting. You do some basic training—speak a couple of sentences—and from this, it builds a list of all the syllables you can utter. Stringing these together in rapid fire allows it to speak in your voice any thought that you say.
The problem is, I have nothing interesting to say. So the idea was to couple this with an idea prompt and then a response from someone who is probably smarter than me (at least knows more than I do) and use my thoughts to talk to myself to generate better ideas. Since I have no good ideas, using AI for this seemed ideal.
The chain goes something like this: ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition.) It recognizes your speech and writes it down. You can then take that message to the AI provider of your choice as an input. I can say, "I'd like to write an article on LinkedIn," and it says, "Have you considered a career as a mime?"
Then comes the part that really gives me the creeps: ElevenLabs will repeat the ideas that the AI comes up with for you—refinements, ideas, finding problems—saying it back to you in your own voice. In this way, you're literally talking to yourself, but finally, your brain is smarter than your brain.