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COACHING FOR PERFORMANCE RUNNERS

A SYNTHETIC BOOK CREATED BY CAIDEN GRIFFIN, AGED 10

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

WE ARE TAUGHT TO FEAR BEING AUTOMATED, AND PEOPLE HAVE A POINT. BUT BY AUTOMATING DIFFERENT TASKS PEOPLE OFTEN OVERLOOK THE FACT THAT IT CAN ALSO DEMOCRATISE ACCESS TO SKILLS AND BOOST HUMAN POTENTIAL THOUSANDS FOLD.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

You might ask why this book is a world first, and that’s a great question. Well, not only is this the first performance running book ever written by a 10 year old, but the book itself was written by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) called ChatGPT for free in the time it takes to run one 5Km Basingstoke Parkrun, or about seventeen minutes.

Furthermore, all the graphics and images are a first of a kind, never seen before they were all generated by a Generative AI called MidJourney in under a day from scratch and for less than £20.

 

How we made the book and its implications on jobs and the future

SO WHERE’S THE HUMAN?

We live in a world full of sci-fi-like technology and while these amazing tools, like the AI’s we used to create this book exist today, Caiden used his own knowledge of elite running to create the AI prompts for the text, then used his creativity to create the prompts for the AI generated artwork. He also used his understanding of books and story telling to generate the flow and format of the book, then used his software skills to create the layout and design of it, while constantly checking the accuracy of the content and getting feedback on it all from his coaches. And, as dad, I just had oversight.

 

AND WHAT’S THE POINT ANYWAY?

On the one hand the point of this book is to produce a complete performance running guide for young aspiring athletes based on the real life experiences of a winning Team GB athlete, and Caiden hopes he’s accomplished that. On the other though it’s to demonstrate and educate people about the power that emerging technologies like these have to change the world, their impact on the future of work, their ability to democratise access to skills that were previously the domain of “human experts,” to stir debate, and to showcase their ability to boost human potential and productivity by thousands fold.

As the world around us changes at an increasingly fast pace we are surrounded by threats and opportunities. Take AI for example, in the long run the AI’s we used to help us produce this book in time could automate over 230 Million jobs in the creative sector – a $6 Trillion sector – as well as coding and many other job categories.

As they do this these technologies democratise access to those skills we used to rely on human experts for. After all, as good as Caiden is at running generating this quality of artwork this quickly and for next to nothing is – or was until now – beyond him. Nonetheless, by using his knowledge of coaching, running, and technology Caiden has done what very few people thought possible and he did most of it faster than he runs many of his races.

Technology is a tool, and as many of them become increasingly smart and capable they open the door to new possibilities. And, in our case, we chose to use them to guide and inspire others, show you the art of the possible, and raise money for charity.

 

HOW WE MADE IT EASY BUT NOT EASY

It’d be all too easy to think that Caiden left the Artificial Intelligences to do all the heavy lifting and to a degree he did – after all they generated almost all the text and every image for it. Despite this amazing feat though all of it, without exception, was directed and micro managed by him, and there was a lot of micro management.

While producing this book was a lot easier than producing everything by hand the old fashioned way, like in 2022, it wasn’t easy. We had to watch out for AI bias, double and triple check everything, then put it all into a readable format – the book you now see before you.

During the project we learned a lot about the potential but also the limits of these powerful world changing AI’s. For example, ChatGPT is pretty generic with its facts – great for high level content but rubbish with the detailed stuff. MidJourney meanwhile seems slightly biased and literally has a mind of its own which can be both interesting and challenging. It also hates clashing different creative genres together and would almost always create awful looking art, it doesn’t like fingers or artwork involving human emotions, and forget anything too complex such as using it to generate a person on a treadmill.

Great as they are both of them had strengths and weaknesses that we had to navigate, but we did everything HUNDREDS of times faster and cheaper than people would have been able to in 2022.

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