This article is reprinted with permission wonder toolsa newsletter that helps you find the most useful sites and apps.
I like pushing A.I. Become Less predictable. As AI assistants become less bland and more daring, they challenge my blind spots and force me to reconsider.
So I asked one of the most daring AI experimenters I know. Alexandra Samuel shared some unconventional tips and tactics during a recent visit to New York from Vancouver.
Alex writes about AI. wall street journal and harvard business reviewI was surprised by the scale of her AI efforts. She described how she has written over 200 automation scripts and built a personal database of ideas to help draft pitch emails. Her most outlandish tactic? use snow Generate songs that explain complex concepts.
her lively new podcast, me and vivexplores her unusual relationship with an AI assistant trained as her coach and collaborator. She interviews AI skeptics: Oliver Berkman and Karen Hao To challenge her own acceptance of AI. The Sno songs generated by Alex serve as a recurring musical thread throughout the series.
In the recent episode, “I'm So sycophantic,” Alex comes face to face with Viv's most infuriating flaw: her pathological tendency to flatter Alex and agree with everything she says.
The interesting premise of this show reminded me of another podcast I love, the Evan Ratliff show. shell gameSeason 2 recently debuted. Both are excellent works that explore what it's like to deeply engage with an AI assistant, who has both resources and flaws.
5 tips from Alex
1. Use snow Turn words into catchy music.What is Suno: AI music generation platform for creating custom songs
Alex uses snow We treat AI as a storytelling tool rather than just music creation, and have written a wide range of songs for podcasts about AI.
“I'm like a monkey with a slot machine. It's common for me to generate the same song 50, 100, even 200 times,” she says.
An iterative process allows you to find the perfect version. According to her, Suno has trouble switching between male and female voices, musical styles, and languages during songs. Alex suggests bringing your own lyrics into Suno for better results than relying on the built-in lyrics generation. Here it is document She wrote about how she uses Suno.
An alternative she recommends is to work iteratively with AI assistants such as: Claude Create lyrics and import them into Suno.
Try: Turn articles and announcements into short promotional songs. Create an engaging music explainer. Or generate a newsletter signup song
Alternative: Udio, eleven lab song
2. Coda: Create your own coder productivity hubwhat coda teeth: Software tools for creating customized documents and databases. I wrote about How Coda is Underrated As an alternative to other useful tools like Notion and Airtable.
Alex calls Coda a hub for everything you can build your own tools on. New AI features make it easier to use and more flexible. Alex used Coda to design his own “pitch machine,” a sophisticated story tracking system.
She has one pitch machine table with all her story ideas. Another table in Coda includes all the publications she has written for, as well as the editor's name and contact information.
With the push of a button in Coda, you can combine multiple story pitches into a single Gmail draft while automatically updating tracking fields and follow-up dates. It took a while to set up, but now it saves me time.
Who is Coda for? Alex recommends Coda for power users who like tinkering with technology. She suggests the following test. “If you want to use XLOOKUP in Excel, you should use Coda. If you don't know XLOOKUP, you should use Notion. It's like a geek meter.”
Try: Track project and campaign ideas, manage your client database, or automatically generate emails and Slack messages.
Alternative: Notion, air table, google workspace, obsidian3. CapCut: Create social videos with the help of AIWhat is it: Video editing platform with AI capabilities
Alex uses Create music videos for Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok using CapCut and custom Python scripts. She says she has mixed feelings about CapCut because of TikTok/ByteDance. I have ownership, but I'm relying on it for now. She is working on a system that synchronizes the display of on-screen captions to the moment a song's lyrics are heard.
Try: Create social media videos with stylish captions or convert podcasts to videos
Alternative: caption, explanationor cup wing
4. Claude + MCP: Connect AI to your documentsWhat is it: AI assistant connected to external databases and tools via Model Context Protocol (MCP)
MCP Servers allow you to connect your site or app to the AI platform. Alex thus connected his Coda account to Claude.
Now that the link is established, Alex can ask Claude a casual question, and Claude can look for content in the Coda document.
“You can actually have a conversation with Claude and say, 'Hi Claude, I spoke to the editor. The editor is looking for articles about data privacy. Could you take a look at my Coda document and see what story ideas might be relevant?'
She emphasizes security considerations. Journalists covering sensitive subjects should avoid this type of experimental workflow when protecting anonymous source information.
Try: Query complex databases, find past work relevant to new projects, analyze patterns across your own documents, and combine multiple data sources for insights.
Alternative: Google Drive Connector Claude or Custom setup for Chat GPT; or NotebookLM
5. Claude Code: Reduce repetitive tasksWhat is it: An AI-powered coding assistant that runs locally on your computer. It helps developers write code faster. It also helps non-programmers perform technical tasks using natural language prompts. You can use it to organize files on your laptop, write Python scripts, and create small interactive applications and games.
Despite having limited formal programming training, Alex has written approximately 200 Python scripts using Claude code.
she says: “Every time I hear myself taking a deep sigh, this is going to be a big dealyou just go to the AI and say, “Hey, I need to do this.” Is there a way to script it? ”
Alex's script helped me combine the PDFs and generate timecoded captions for the video. She also used Claude Code to build her own Firefox extension for a financial tracking app.
Try: Solve specific problems such as processing batch files, converting data, and creating browser extensions.
Alternative: Riplit, cursor, claude artifact, windsurfing
This article is reprinted with permission wonder toolsa newsletter that helps you find the most useful sites and apps.
About the author
Jeremy Caplan is the director of teaching and learning at Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, State University of New York. wonder tools Newsletter.
fast company
