Networking with industry leaders is an invaluable strategy for professional growth and expanding your influence within your field. Meeting industry leaders open up a world full of new opportunities. You can build your brand reputation, learn new things, and obtain emotional support through networking. We’ve listed four effective collaborative approaches below to help you network with leaders in your industry. 1. Attend Key Industry Events Conferences, events, seminars, and unique award shows are excellent ways of building external connections. Various professional groups or associations arrange events or meetups to encourage networking among their members. Trade shows and conferences are also great for meeting new people in your industry. Always keep your eyes open for such professional events. And when you’re attending such events, don’t hesitate to speak up. Opening yourself up to others also unlocks networking opportunities. It establishes yourself as valuable, encouraging people to engage with you. Regularly attend networking events and meetups to expand your professional network, connect with industry leaders across various fields, and foster meaningful connections through engaging conversations and follow-ups. 2. Engage in Online Platforms Engaging in online platforms, particularly social media platforms like LinkedIn, can provide significant advantages for collaborating and expanding influence with industry leaders. These platforms allow individuals to network with professionals, gather valuable information, and promote their businesses effectively. Here are some key benefits of engaging in online platforms: Extensive Networking Opportunities: Connect with industry leaders and build a professional network by adding professionals you know on LinkedIn. Background Research and Preparation: Gain insights into industry leaders’ expertise through their profiles and posts, helping you make a strong first impression. Talent Recruitment: Use LinkedIn to find top talent and access a diverse pool of professionals. Marketing and Promotion: Utilize LinkedIn’s networking and marketing tools to amplify your business reach and establish thought leadership. 3. Start Sharing Knowledge Networking should not be a one-sided endeavor. Offer mutual value and support to industry leaders by actively seeking opportunities for collaboration and knowledge-sharing. Consider organizing joint projects, webinars, or workshops where both parties can contribute their expertise. Become a recognized industry authority by actively contributing to industry publications, blogs, and thought leadership platforms, boosting your visibility and attracting industry leaders. You can also seek mentorship and guidance from established industry leaders. It’s a unique opportunity to build valuable connections with experienced professionals. 4. Engage with Businesses Engaging with businesses is crucial for networking and expanding your professional connections. You can establish valuable relationships with business leaders by actively participating in industry-specific associations, events, and initiatives. Additionally, trade shows allow you to showcase your business and engage with potential partners. Here are some key strategies for engaging with businesses.: Join industry-specific associations and organizations to access a professional network, gain industry insights, and attend events. Participate in committees and volunteering initiatives to contribute to the industry, collaborate with professionals, and gain visibility. Collect business information such as cards or social media handles for future contact and easy reference. Attend trade shows as a vendor to engage with industry professionals, showcase your offerings, and enhance brand visibility. Prioritize relationship building over self-promotion by showing genuine interest in others’ businesses and goals. Identify key physical and online networking locations frequented by industry professionals. Engage in collaborative projects to showcase skills, dedication, and effective teamwork, attracting industry leaders. Remember, networking is a long-term investment that requires effort, sincerity, and a willingness to contribute to the success of others. Embrace these collaborative approaches, and watch your network flourish while your professional influence expands.

When Meta debuted its new Threads feature earlier this month, it was quickly dubbed “the Twitter killer.” Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter), even threatened to sue Meta for what he called a “copycat” product. Launched off the back of Instagram, also owned by Meta, Threads looks very similar to X. It’s scrollable, text-based, and character-limited. But why, when X has been notoriously unprofitable, would Meta—which brought us the infamous “pivot to video” and has had its sights set on competing with TikTok—want to take on the platform? The answer may have to do with artificial intelligence. Recent months have seen a veritable AI arms race, with tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Copilot, Dall-E, and Google’s Bard all jockeying for users. As more companies invest in generative AI, they need lots of data to train their models. And that data needs to be generated by actual humans in order for the generative AI to appear, well, human. Platforms like Reddit and X are gold mines because they host millions of examples of user-generated content. Both companies have also historically made their data readily available, a boon for third-party developers and researchers. In 2020 alone, data from X contributed to more than 17,000 research papers. Models like ChatGPT and Bard were also trained on data from these platforms. But this has sparked bigger questions about how much user-generated data is worth, and what it should cost to access. Now, that data may not be readily available for long, just as every company, including Meta, is rushing to develop their own models. Earlier this year, Musk announced that X would begin charging $42,000 a month for its API, pricing out nearly everyone that used it, particularly academics and researchers, for whom data from X was crucial for research into topics like disinformation. Later, the company said it would offer tiers of access priced at $125,000 and $210,000 per month. Not long thereafter, Reddit announced it would also start charging for its API. In an interview with The New York Times, Reddit CEO Reed Huffman acknowledged that the “Reddit corpus of data is really valuable” for training AI models but that the company didn’t feel the “need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.” In the past several months, Musk has continued to crack down on access to X’s data. In April, he tweeted that Microsoft had “illegally” used data from X to train its AI models (Microsoft is a partner with Meta and OpenAI, which created ChatGPT). A letter from X’s lawyer alleged that the company had exceeded the allowed use of the data it drew from the platform. Then, last month, Twitter announced it would restrict the ability to see the site’s content without first logging in, and that to see more that 600 tweets per day, users would need to pay for Twitter Blue. Musk called it a “temporary emergency measure” to prevent what he called “data pillaging.” (XCorp, which owns X, filed a lawsuit shortly after against four unnamed defendants, seeking $1 million in damages for data scraping). As Musk has limited access to the platform, he has also launched his new xAI startup, which will be trained on data from X. What does all this have to do with Threads? Meta, which gambled its future—and its name—on the metaverse, has fallen behind in its investment in AI. But last week, the company announced it would be making its large language model, Llama 2, open source, free for researchers and businesses alike (this also means, however, it won’t have some of the safeguards of ChatGPT, namely the ability to revoke access from users who violate the terms of use to generate, say, disinformation). Threads could bolster its efforts to get back in the AI game, just when X is no longer an option for companies seeking to harvest data.

Last week, the Authors Guild sent an open letter to the leaders of some of the world’s biggest generative AI companies. Signed by more than 9,000 writers, including prominent authors like George Saunders and Margaret Atwood, it asked the likes of Alphabet, OpenAI, Meta, and Microsoft “to obtain consent, credit, and fairly compensate writers for the use of copyrighted materials in training AI.” The plea is just the latest in a series of efforts by creatives to secure credit and compensation for the role they claim their work has played in training generative AI systems. The training data used for large language models, or LLMs, and other generative AI systems has been kept clandestine. But the more these systems are used, the more writers and visual artists are noticing similarities between their work and these systems’ output. Many have called on generative AI companies to reveal their data sources, and—as with the Authors Guild—to compensate those whose works were used. Some of the pleas are open letters and social media posts, but an increasing number are lawsuits. It’s here that copyright law plays a major role. Yet it is a tool that is ill equipped to tackle the full scope of artists’ anxieties, whether these be long-standing worries over employment and compensation in a world upended by the internet, or new concerns about privacy and personal—and uncopyrightable—characteristics. For many of these, copyright can offer only limited answers. “There are a lot of questions that AI creates for almost every aspect of society,” says Mike Masnick, editor of the technology blog Techdirt. “But this narrow focus on copyright as the tool to deal with it, I think, is really misplaced.” The most high-profile of these recent lawsuits came earlier this month when comedian Sarah Silverman, alongside four other authors in two separate filings, sued OpenAI, claiming the company trained its wildly popular ChatGPT system on their works without permission. Both class-action lawsuits were filed by the Joseph Saveri Law Firm, which specializes in antitrust litigation. The firm is also representing the artists suing Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt for similar reasons. Last week, during a hearing in that case, US district court judge William Orrick indicated he might dismiss most of the suit, stating that, since these systems had been trained on “five billion compressed images,” the artists involved needed to “provide more facts” for their copyright infringement claims. The Silverman case alleges, among other things, that OpenAI may have scraped the comedian’s memoir, Bedwetter, via “shadow libraries” that host troves of pirated ebooks and academic papers. If the court finds in favor of Silverman and her fellow plaintiffs, the ruling could set new precedent for how the law views the data sets used to train AI models, says Matthew Sag, a law professor at Emory University. Specifically, it could help determine whether companies can claim fair use when their models scrape copyrighted material. “I’m not going to call the outcome on this question,” Sag says of Silverman’s lawsuit. “But it seems to be the most compelling of all of the cases that have been filed.” OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment. At the core of these cases, explains Sag, is the same general theory: that LLMs “copied” authors’ protected works. Yet, as Sag explained in testimony to a US Senate subcommittee hearing earlier this month, models like GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 do not “copy” work in the traditional sense. Digest would be a more appropriate verb—digesting training data to carry out their function: predicting the best next word in a sequence. “Rather than thinking of an LLM as copying the training data like a scribe in a monastery,” Sag said in his Senate testimony, “it makes more sense to think of it as learning from the training data like a student.”

Over the past eight months, ChatGPT has impressed millions of people with its ability to generate realistic-looking text, writing everything from stories to code. But the chatbot, developed by OpenAI, is still relatively limited in what it can do. The large language model (LLM) takes “prompts” from users that it uses to generate ostensibly related text. These responses are created partly from data scraped from the internet in September 2021, and it doesn’t pull in new data from the web. Enter plug-ins, which add functionality but are available only to people who pay for access to GPT-4, the updated version of OpenAI’s model. Since OpenAI launched plug-ins for ChatGPT in March, developers have raced to create and publish plug-ins that allow the chatbot to do a lot more. Existing plug-ins let you search for flights and plan trips, and make it so ChatGPT can access and analyze text on websites, in documents, and on videos. Other plug-ins are more niche, promising you the ability to chat with the Tesla owner’s manual or search through British political speeches. There are currently more than 100 pages of plug-ins listed on ChatGPT’s plug-in store. But amid the explosion of these extensions, security researchers say there are some problems with the way that plug-ins operate, which can put people’s data at risk or potentially be abused by malicious hackers. Johann Rehberger, a red team director at Electronic Arts and security researcher, has been documenting issues with ChatGPT’s plug-ins in his spare time. The researcher has documented how ChatGPT plug-ins could be used to steal someone’s chat history, obtain personal information, and allow code to be remotely executed on someone’s machine. He has mostly been focusing on plug-ins that use OAuth, a web standard that allows you to share data across online accounts. Rehberger says he has been in touch privately with around a half-dozen plug-in developers to raise issues, and has contacted OpenAI a handful of times. “ChatGPT cannot trust the plug-in,” Rehberger says. “It fundamentally cannot trust what comes back from the plug-in because it could be anything.” A malicious website or document could, through the use of a plug-in, attempt to run a prompt injection attack against the large language model (LLM). Or it could insert malicious payloads, Rehberger says. “You’re potentially giving it the keys to the kingdom—access to your databases and other systems.” Steve Wilson, chief product officer at Contrast Security Data could also potentially be stolen through cross plug-in request forgery, the researcher says. A website could include a prompt injection that makes ChatGPT open another plug-in and perform extra actions, which he has shown through a proof of concept. Researchers call this “chaining,” where one plug-in calls another one to operate. “There are no real security boundaries” within ChatGPT plug-ins, Rehberger says. “It is not very well defined, what the security and trust, what the actual responsibilities [are] of each stakeholder.” Since they launched in March, ChatGPT’s plug-ins have been in beta—essentially an early experimental version. When using plug-ins on ChatGPT, the system warns that people should trust a plug-in before they use it, and that for the plug-in to work ChatGPT may need to send your conversation and other data to the plug-in. Niko Felix, a spokesperson for OpenAI, says the company is working to improve ChatGPT against “exploits” that can lead to its system being abused. It currently reviews plug-ins before they are included in its store. In a blog post in June, the company said it has seen research showing how “untrusted data from a tool’s output can instruct the model to perform unintended actions.” And that it encourages developers to make people click confirmation buttons before actions with “real-world impact,” such as sending an email, are done by ChatGPT.

A fleet of robot ships bobs gently in the warm waters of the Persian Gulf, somewhere between Bahrain and Qatar, maybe 100 miles off the coast of Iran. I am on the nearby deck of a US Coast Guard speedboat, squinting off what I understand is the port side. On this morning in early December 2022, the horizon is dotted with oil tankers and cargo ships and tiny fishing dhows, all shimmering in the heat. As the speedboat zips around the robot fleet, I long for a parasol, or even a cloud. The robots do not share my pathetic human need for shade, nor do they require any other biological amenities. This is evident in their design. A few resemble typical patrol boats like the one I’m on, but most are smaller, leaner, lower to the water. One looks like a solar-powered kayak. Another looks like a surfboard with a metal sail. Yet another reminds me of a Google Street View car on pontoons. These machines have mustered here for an exercise run by Task Force 59, a group within the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Its focus is robotics and artificial intelligence, two rapidly evolving technologies shaping the future of war. Task Force 59’s mission is to swiftly integrate them into naval operations, which it does by acquiring the latest off-the-shelf tech from private contractors and putting the pieces together into a coherent whole. The exercise in the Gulf has brought together more than a dozen uncrewed platforms—surface vessels, submersibles, aerial drones. They are to be Task Force 59’s distributed eyes and ears: They will watch the ocean’s surface with cameras and radar, listen beneath the water with hydrophones, and run the data they collect through pattern-matching algorithms that sort the oil tankers from the smugglers. A fellow human on the speedboat draws my attention to one of the surfboard-style vessels. It abruptly folds its sail down, like a switchblade, and slips beneath the swell. Called a Triton, it can be programmed to do this when its systems sense danger. It seems to me that this disappearing act could prove handy in the real world: A couple of months before this exercise, an Iranian warship seized two autonomous vessels, called Saildrones, which can’t submerge. The Navy had to intervene to get them back. The Triton could stay down for as long as five days, resurfacing when the coast is clear to charge its batteries and phone home. Fortunately, my speedboat won’t be hanging around that long. It fires up its engine and roars back to the docking bay of a 150-foot-long Coast Guard cutter. I head straight for the upper deck, where I know there’s a stack of bottled water beneath an awning. I size up the heavy machine guns and mortars pointed out to sea as I pass. The deck cools in the wind as the cutter heads back to base in Manama, Bahrain. During the journey, I fall into conversation with the crew. I’m eager to talk with them about the war in Ukraine and the heavy use of drones there, from hobbyist quadcopters equipped with hand grenades to full-on military systems. I want to ask them about a recent attack on the Russian-occupied naval base in Sevastopol, which involved a number of Ukrainian-built drone boats bearing explosives—and a public crowdfunding campaign to build more. But these conversations will not be possible, says my chaperone, a reservist from the social media company Snap. Because the Fifth Fleet operates in a different region, those on Task Force 59 don’t have much information about what’s going on in Ukraine, she says. Instead, we talk about AI image generators and whether they’ll put artists out of a job, about how civilian society seems to be reaching its own inflection point with artificial intelligence. In truth, we don’t know the half of it yet. It has been just a day since OpenAI launched ChatGPT 504, the conversational interface that would break the internet.

While “interesting” images may tend to be more memorable, says Bainbridge, many other factors influence whether artwork lingers in your mind. Very strong negative emotions, like disgust or fear, will make an experience stick, she says. It’s possible that the researchers didn’t see that particular effect in this study because none of the paintings were truly grotesque or horrifying (as these characteristics would be uncommon in a museum like the Art Institute). The brain also tends to prioritize surprising, new, and unusual things. “We remember the past so we can predict the future better,” writes Bylinskii. She speculates that certain works of art may become culturally famous because they stand out—whether by being stylistically unique, touching on an unusual subject, or violating expectations. “For these reasons, they get ingrained in people’s brains,” she says. Now Davis and Bainbridge are trying a new approach to figuring out what makes art memorable: asking artists for help. Bainbridge’s lab is running a contest challenging artists to create their most memorable and forgettable artwork. Submitted pieces will be shown in a gallery, and viewers’ memories will be tested. The pieces that people are most likely to remember (or forget) will win, and hopefully provide some clues about what makes art pop. (Submissions are open to any US-based artist willing to ship their work to Chicago by January 1, 2024.) Beyond seeing whether artists can figure out what makes an image enduring, Davis hopes to study how memorability is shaped during the art-making process. Artists must include at least five photos of their work in progress. “Adding a brushstroke here or there changes memorability,” Davis says, “so we’re using ResMem to track changes in memorability with every change to the painting.” Any time we learn about how the human brain prioritizes information, Bylinskii writes, “it creates opportunities for manipulation, toward good or bad outcomes.” ResMem is copyrighted by the University of Chicago, so corporations can’t use it to, for instance, make catchier advertisements. “That helps us go to bed at night,” Bainbridge says. But companies like Fosco’s are already using their own deep learning models to help clients make subtle changes to ad content to boost click rates and recall. Fosco also envisions educators harnessing this science to make slide decks and infographics easier for students to remember. AI that can predict how much a piece of art will stick with a viewer—and possibly give artists the power to fine-tune their work to cater to their audience—might sound scary to visual artists. Along with generative AI tools like Dall-E, people might fear it will hinder their creative process or expression, Davis says. Davis is often asked whether he’ll apply these findings to his own art, but he says he tries to avoid allowing his neuroscience insight to seep into his creative world. He envisions ResMem as a tool gallery curators and artists could use to hone the presentation of their work, but not as a replacement for their own creative direction. While exploiting the power of memorability has the potential to threaten artists and anyone who consumes entertainment, Bylinskii believes that figuring out what makes an image stick can also arm people against manipulation. “The solution is not to create less knowledge,” she writes, “but to make the knowledge so widespread that others can recognize when it’s being used against them.” Update 7-25-2023 3:19 PM: This story was updated to correct the spelling of Zoya Bylinskii’s name and the link to her team’s 2015 study.

Anyone running a business will tell you that there is no escaping the expenses your business will face. Expenses come in various forms; however, operating and non-operating expenses are the two most common categories. In its simplest form, operating expenses are the costs a business acquires through its standard operations, such as payroll and rent. Non-operating expenses, like restructuring costs and inventory write-offs, are unrelated to a business’s daily operations. However, operating and non-operating expenses can affect a business’s financial health. Higher operating expenses result in lower profits. This article examines the four common operating expenses that can often directly impact a business’s profitability and practical tips to reduce these costs and increase your organisation’s bottom line. 1. Lower Utility Costs Overhead expenses are the costs of running your business that are not directly related to providing a product or service. These expenses can be fixed, such as paying for a fleet vehicle lease, or variable, like delivery costs or commissions. Any business’s highest variable overhead cost is its utility expense, including water, electricity, and heating consumption. You can reduce water and electricity consumption and lower heating costs without disrupting your business operations and taking drastic measures that break the bank. Here’s how: How to Reduce Electricity Consumption Switch Energy Suppliers: Switching energy suppliers and finding a better energy tariff can save your company money. Use a comparison website or energy broker like Business Energy Comparison to help find a supplier that suits your business needs and budget. Conduct an Energy Audit: Energy Audits are designed to help businesses see how much energy they consume and where they waste. An auditor will identify areas for improvement and recommend ways to reduce consumption. Upgrade to Energy-efficient Lighting: Switching to LED lighting can save your business up to 80 percent of their energy bills. LED lighting saves energy and lasts twice as long, reducing regular maintenance and replacement expenses. Unplug Equipment: Devices, equipment, and appliances plugged in at the wall socket continue draining energy even if switched off. Unplug devices or invest in smart plugs or power strips that cut off energy-draining machines when not in use. How to Reduce Water Consumption Install Water-efficient fixtures: Replace old faucets with aerators or low-flow taps to reduce the water flow, and replacing toilets with dual-flush toilets saves thousands of litres of water a year, providing a large opportunity for saving money within your business whilst also being more sustainable. Check for leaks: Regularly check your plumbing for leaks. Small drips from a tap can add up to 20 gallons of water, resulting in a costly utility bill. Switch to water-efficient appliances: Replacing outdated appliances like a dishwasher with a water-efficient one can save a commercial restaurant up to 3000 litres per day. Newer water-efficient appliances are also energy-efficient, which reduces water and energy consumption, saving your business money. Install a smart water meter: A smart meter lets you track how much water your business consumes, showing if you leak the property, giving you control over how much you use and spend. 2. Automate the Payroll Process Payroll is one of the biggest business challenges for many, and one mistake could impact an organisation’s trust and reputation. Payroll expenses go beyond salaries and tax deductions. It also includes, amongst others, employee benefits, bonuses, and paid leave. Automating the process is one way to reduce costs. Your business can easily avoid the hassle of manually managing payroll with spreadsheets simply by using an automated payroll system to pay employees accurately and on time. This leaves room for your payroll administrators or finance team to concentrate on other company areas, increasing productivity. Using an automated payroll system saves your company money by reducing the need for employees. It also streamlines the entire payroll process, reduces the chances of human error, and simplifies taxes. It provides the opportunity to increase business profits and cut operating expenses. Companies that automate their payroll process can significantly reduce their operating costs. 3. Switch to The Cloud Businesses can avoid investing in physical infrastructure using cloud computing, such as servers and data centres. You can use the infrastructure offered by cloud service providers instead, which lowers initial and ongoing costs. Infrastructure and hardware management are simplified by reducing initial capital costs and ongoing maintenance costs. Pay-as-you-go pricing is a model that most cloud service providers offer. This can significantly reduce costs by only paying for the services you actually need and use. Without making long-term commitments, your business can change how you allocate resources based on usage. This ensures a reduction in your monthly overhead and operating expenses. 4. Renegotiate Communication Expenses Every business needs effective communication tools to succeed. However, the costs associated with communication, such as those for fixed telephone lines, business telephone equipment, and internet access, can add up quickly. Companies should review their contracts and negotiate with service providers for lower rates or look for discounted packages to reduce communication costs. To ensure you get the best value for your business, look for service providers willing to negotiate and align with your business needs. Technology is moving at a rapid pace. Instead of investing in expensive traditional phone systems, companies might consider using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services. VoIP uses the internet to place calls, frequently less costly than conventional phone lines. Final Thoughts Reducing your business’s operating expenses is crucial but doable to boost profits. The only way to yield higher profit margins is to find areas where overhead can be reduced without sacrificing the company’s operations.  For additional insight, news, and tips, visit https://www.noobpreneur.com/.

Instead, Ukraine wants to use the data that’s being gathered for its own defense sector. “After the war has finished, Ukraine companies will go to the market and offer solutions that probably nobody else has,” Bornyakov says. Over the past few months, Ukraine has been talking up its ambitions to leverage its battlefield innovations to build a military-tech industry of its own. “We want to build a very strong defense tech industry,” says Nataliia Kushnerska, project lead for Brave1, a Ukrainian state platform designed to make it easier for defense-tech companies to pitch their products to the military. The country still wants to partner and cooperate with international companies, she says, but there is a growing emphasis on homegrown solutions. Building a domestic industry would help protect the country from future Russian aggression, Kushnerska says. And Ukrainians have a better understanding of the dynamics of the battlefield than their international counterparts. “Technologies that cost a huge amount of money, made in [overseas] laboratories, are coming to the front line, and they’re not working,” she says. Brave1—which was exclusively open to Ukrainian companies for its first two months of existence—is not the country’s only attempt to build a homegrown industry. Kushnerska describes secret tech conferences, attended by Ukrainian tech executives and Ministry of Defense officials, where discussions can take place about what the militaries need and how companies can help. In May, Ukraine’s parliament voted through a series of tax breaks for drone makers, in an attempt to encourage the industry. Those government efforts, combined with the huge demand for drones and the motivation to win the war, is creating entire new industries, says Bornyakov. He claims the country now has more than 300 companies making drones. One of those 300 companies is AeroDrone, which started out as a crop-spraying system based in Germany. By the time of the full-scale invasion, the company’s Ukrainian founder, Yuri Pederi, had already moved back to his home country. But the war inspired him to pivot the business. Now the drones, which can carry heavy loads of up to 300 kilograms, are being used by the Ukrainian military. “We don’t know what the military are carrying,” says Dmytro Shymkiv, a partner at the company, who used to be deputy chief of staff for Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president who preceded Zelenskyy. He might plead ignorance to what AeroDrone drones are transporting, but the company is collecting vast amounts of data—up to 3,000 parameters—on each flight. “We are very much aware of what’s going on with every piece of equipment on board,” he says, adding that information about flying while being jammed, or in different weather conditions, can be repurposed in other industries or even other conflicts. Aerodrone offers a glimpse of the future companies Bornyakov is describing. Armed with that data, the company sees a wide range of options for its future once the war is over, both military and civilian. If you can fly in a war zone, Shymkiv says, you can fly anywhere.

ChatGPT is never short of ideas. OpenAI via David Nield Find Inspiration Whatever you might think about the quality and character of ChatGPT’s prose, it’s hard to deny that it’s quite good at coming up with ideas. If your powers of imagination have hit a wall then you can turn to ChatGPT for some inspiration about plot points, character motivations, the settings of scenes, and so on. This can be anything from the broad to the detailed. Maybe you need ideas about what to write a novel or an article about—where it’s set, what the context is, and what the theme is. If you’re a short story writer, perhaps you could challenge yourself to write five tales inspired by ideas from ChatGPT. Alternatively, you might need inspiration for something very precise, whether that’s what happens next in a scene or how to summarize an essay. At whatever point in the process you get writer’s block, then ChatGPT might be one way of working through it. Do Research Writing is often about a lot more than putting words down in order. You’ll regularly have to look up facts, figures, trends, history, and more to make sure that everything is accurate (unless your next literary work is entirely inside a fantasy world that you’re imagining yourself). ChatGPT can sometimes have the edge over conventional search engines when it comes to knowing what food people might have eaten in a certain year in a certain part of the world, or what the procedure is for a particular type of crime. Whereas Google might give you SEO-packed spam sites with conflicting answers, ChatGPT will actually return something coherent. That said, we know that LLMs have a tendency to “hallucinate” and present inaccurate information—so you should always double-check what ChatGPT tells you with a second source to make sure you’re not getting something wildly wrong. Choose Character and Place Names Getting fictional character and place names right can be a challenge, especially when they’re important to the plot. A name has to have the right vibe and the right connotations, and if you get it wrong it really sticks out on the page. ChatGPT can come up with an unlimited number of names for people and places in your next work of fiction, and it can be a lot of fun playing around with this too. The more detail you give about a person or a place, the better—maybe you want a name that really reflects a character trait for example, or a geographical feature.

While lots of people are interested in taking up side hustles, far fewer actually succeed with them. What’s one sign a side hustle will likely do well, and why is that such a good indication of its success? These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most successful young entrepreneurs. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate billions of dollars in revenue each year, and have created tens of thousands of jobs. Learn more at yec.co. 1. It Breeds Consistency A side hustle that’ll likely do well is the one that breeds consistency. There’s no such thing as overnight success; you’ll fail multiple times until you reach your goal. The reason most side hustles don’t make it is that people quit midway and don’t see things through. If you don’t mind giving 100% despite failing at something multiple times, you’ll eventually find a way to turn things around. – Jared Atchison, WPForms 2. It’s Based on Your Expertise One strong indication of a side hustle’s potential success is when it’s based on your area of expertise. When you share what you’re good at, not only do you have the chance to earn extra income, but you also deepen your understanding of the subject. Teaching requires exploring every aspect of your craft, keeping you engaged and pushing you to improve continuously. – Yury Sokolov, Finazon 3. You Have a Well-Defined Business Plan for It A side hustle will likely do well if there is a clear and well-defined business plan outlining the goals, strategies, target market, financial projections and operational details of the side hustle. It helps the side hustler stay focused, make informed decisions and navigate challenges effectively. A well-structured plan shows that the side hustler has thoroughly thought through their venture. – Kazi Mamun, CANSOFT 4. You’re Passionate About It Is it a job or a passion project? Are you pursuing it for the dollars it will bring? Or are you pursuing it because you enjoy it? In order for any venture to be successful, you need to invest your time, energy and commitment. If you’re not enjoying it, you won’t pursue it for long enough. Choose a side hustle that doesn’t feel like a hustle! Success and money will follow. – Candice Georgiadis, Digital Day 5. It’s Low-Cost and Automatable Side hustles that can be automated and run on low overhead costs are more likely to succeed. A side hustle should only take up a maximum of five to 10 hours a week, and anything longer starts to creep into part-time job territory. Try to generate a positive return on investment using a sustainable revenue plan within three to six months before you worry about scaling or investing more money. – Ian Blair, BuildFire 6. It Offers a Unique Solution If you can define a unique value proposition for your side hustle, you’ll know that you can achieve success from it. Look for ways your users can benefit from your product or service. Is it different from your competitors? Does it offer a unique solution to solve the pain points of your users? These are a couple questions that can help you identify your unique value proposition. – Josh Kohlbach, Wholesale Suite 7. It Increasingly Engages Customers A promising sign of a successful side hustle is consistent, increasing customer interest and engagement. Whether through sales, inquiries or social media interactions, sustained customer engagement indicates your offering resonates with people. It’s a practical metric of market validation, which is crucial to the longevity and success of any business venture. – Kyle Goguen, Pawstruck 8. It Combines a Growing Trends With Your Own Interests A side hustle will likely do well when it encompasses a growing trend that happens to coincide with one of your interests. Starting a side hustle may sound fascinating, but people often don’t give 100% to it. But when it aligns with your interests, work becomes fun. So, you’re more likely to commit to it even after a busy day at work, day in and day out. That’s what ensures its success. – Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms 9. You’ve Done the Market Research for It People often take up side hustles without careful consideration, and that’s one of the major reasons they don’t succeed. Market research is very important and provides you with relevant insights to make informed decisions. So, you should consider different factors such as market demand and competition along with careful analysis of your available resources before getting started. – Chris Klosowski, Easy Digital Downloads 10. It Has Expandability and Longevity A key factor for a successful side hustle is its “expandability and longevity.” If your venture can grow without a significant increase in effort or resources, it’s likely to thrive. Also, it’s crucial that your side hustle isn’t a fleeting trend but addresses a long-term need. This balance ensures your side hustle can evolve over time, providing a steady income and satisfaction. – Vikas Agrawal, Infobrandz