How this former NYT columnist uses ChatGPT to brainstorm, do research, and find the perfect metaphor

1. 0:00 – 2:40

   Intro

   1. CVClaire Vo0:00

      How do you walk through the process of brainstorming an idea instead of using Google?

   2. FMFarhad Manjoo0:05

      Right off the bat, it tells me, you know, about the main people in the administration who are talking about this. It gives me links to articles that I can read. This is the stuff that when I was writing a column every week, it would take me probably half a day or so to just find all the stuff and kind of figure out what I was gonna write about.

   3. CVClaire Vo0:21

      I'm presuming in the past you would've done this with colleagues in a newsroom, and you could have these conversations live.

   4. FMFarhad Manjoo0:26

      You know you're not talking to a colleague, you know you're not talking to a human, but in many ways it sort of has that same function because the interface is similar. Probably it's not as smart as that person, but it's maybe 80%, and it's great, and instant, and available all the time.

   5. CVClaire Vo0:40

      I think there's a lot of fear that ChatGPT or AI-generated writing is slop, and it's all generic. I love seeing this idea of you making the writing more specific and more impactful.

   6. FMFarhad Manjoo0:51

      Quickly, I, you know, just discovered that it was so useful that now when I write, I have, like, two windows open on my screen. One is ChatGPT, and one is the document I'm working on. [upbeat music]

   7. CVClaire Vo1:06

      Hey, everyone. Welcome to How I AI. I'm Claire, product leader and AI obsessive on a mission to help you build better with this new technology. Today, we're talking about how AI is transforming the writing experience with none other than Farhad Manjoo, former columnist for The New York Times and one of the most interesting voices in tech writing out there. Farhad's gonna give us practical tips and tricks on how to make our own writing better using AI, and you're definitely not gonna wanna miss his special word-finding technique to discover that perfect idiom or metaphor. Let's get to it. This episode is brought to you by Enterpret. Enterpret is a customer intelligence platform used by leading CX and product orgs like Canva, Notion, Strava, Hinge, and Linear to leverage the voice of the customer and build best-in-class products. Enterpret unifies all customer conversations in real time, from Gong recordings to Zendesk tickets to Twitter threads, and makes it available for your team for analysis. What makes Enterpret unique is its ability to build and update a customer-specific knowledge graph that provides the most granular and accurate categorization of all customer feedback and connects that feedback to critical metrics like revenue and CSAT. If modernizing your voice of the customer program to a generational upgrade is a 2025 priority, like customer-centric industry leaders Canva, Notion, and Linear, reach out to the team at enterpret.com/howiai. That's E-N-T-E-R-P-R-E-T.com/howiai.

2. 2:40 – 4:20

   Farhad’s journey from skepticism to adoption of AI tools

   1. CVClaire Vo2:41

      Hi, Farhad. It's amazing to have you here. I'm super excited to see some of the workflows you use in your writing, but before we get in it, I have to ask, as someone who writes for a living, what made you curious about these tools versus skeptical?

   2. FMFarhad Manjoo2:56

      I was a columnist at The New York Times for a while, and I was a columnist when ChatGPT came out in 2023, I think it was. And, you know, I st- I, I just looked at it because everyone was looking at it, and then, um, the first versions were not good enough to kind of help w- with writing. It was very poor writing, but it quickly got better, and there was a lot of... Just from creative people generally, there's this sense that, like, AI is a replacement, but I've always been sort of like a early, earliest adopter of things, and I really noticed, even when it was in its, uh, you know, infancy, and, like, not great, it could be helpful for l- like, circumstances that in the past would take me a long time to do in Google. Like, for ex- like, the most basic is just, like, finding another word. Like, this is m- better, the best thesaurus I've ever used because you can, like, talk to it about, you know, what- things that have meaning. It soon sort of started to become, like, a little bit of, like, a companion. Um, no, it was sort of like, first, I would just, like, consult with it, I don't know, maybe once or twice when I was writing an article, but quickly, I disc- I, you know, just discovered that it was so useful that now when I write, I have, like, two windows open on my screen. One is ChatGPT, and one is the document I'm working

3. 4:20 – 6:54

   Brainstorming with ChatGPT

   1. FMFarhad Manjoo4:20

      on.

   2. CVClaire Vo4:20

      So let's just get into, into the writing, and I'd love to go through sort of your step-by-step flow about how you use this companion through the whole process. So let's start with brainstorming. How do you walk through the process of brainstorming an idea instead of using Google, using some of these AI tools?

   3. FMFarhad Manjoo4:38

      It's become sort of, like, crucial in the brainstorming stage, especially after they added, um, web search to it, so sort of it now knows, like, what's on the web. So a very sort of easy thing that I start with is, like, uh, say I'm writing... Say I was, say I was writing a, an article about Trump's tariffs, and I wanted to know just sort of generally... Let's say I was arguing that the tariffs were great. Uh, and so I wanted to know, like, what's the kind of general consensus in the news about, like, uh, about the tariffs, and, like, um, are there- is there anyone saying they're great? Because everything I've read is that they're, you know, gonna cause lots of trouble. So that's, like, kind of a difficult question that in the past I would've just Googled. Like, spent a lot of time Googling, getting together, um, you know, uh, articles, and kind of synthesizing after reading a bunch of things, and now, I mean, maybe we could just ask it right now.

   4. CVClaire Vo5:34

      Yeah.

   5. FMFarhad Manjoo5:34

      I just made that example, but-

   6. CVClaire Vo5:36

      Can you... Could you share your screen?

   7. FMFarhad Manjoo5:37

      Uh, okay. So I've been using the latest version, which is 4.5, which is just really great at writing. Like, it's sort of, like, the biggest writing improvement I've seen, but it is slow. Like, the, um, the earlier ones were just sort of much faster, so I'm gonna just switch to four. Um, if it... We have any-- If it doesn't work very well, [chuckles] then we could go to the old one.

   8. CVClaire Vo5:59

      We'll switch back.

   9. FMFarhad Manjoo5:59

      Uh, the new one. But so then, like, if you, if you turn on web search down here, and you ask it something like-... Tell me about, like, all the commentary on Trump's tariffs, and especially any that say the tariffs are good. Okay, so, so, like, right off the bat, it tells me, you know, about the kind of main people in the administration who are talking about this. It gives me links to articles that I can read. This is the stuff that when I was writing a column every week, it would take me, you know, probably half a day or so to just find all the stuff and kind of figure out what I was gonna write about. But then now, here, I could just kind of interrogate it and ask it for, like, "Is there anyone in the automotive industry who has commented on the tar- tariffs

4. 6:54 – 8:34

   Assessing the quality of AI-sourced information

   1. FMFarhad Manjoo6:54

      or-?"

   2. CVClaire Vo6:54

      And I have a question while this is returning the results, which is-

   3. FMFarhad Manjoo6:57

      Yeah.

   4. CVClaire Vo6:57

      Do you find the sources are of equal quality of what you would find if you were doing a Google search? Good, bad, how are you assessing the quality of the sources here?

   5. FMFarhad Manjoo7:08

      Since they added web search, they put a little link next to-

   6. CVClaire Vo7:13

      Mm-hmm

   7. FMFarhad Manjoo7:13

      ... all the things that they, uh, uh, next to the source of whatever statement they're making. So, for example, like I just asked it, "Is there anyone who is co- in the automotive industry who has commented?" So it showed me a Business Insider article, a Detroit Free Press article, Reuters. It generally, if you ask it about news stuff, it generally will show you sources that are, you know, kind of well-named, well-known-

   8. CVClaire Vo7:38

      Mm-hmm

   9. FMFarhad Manjoo7:38

      ... news sources. Um, but it also just shows you everything, like, all, at the bottom here, you can kind of click-

   10. CVClaire Vo7:44

       Click

   11. FMFarhad Manjoo7:44

       ... and it shows you all the things it consulted. And, you know, there, like, if, if there's something that seems off, like, you can just check the sources. So, um, you know, initially, when it wasn't sort of giving you links or telling you how it got this information, it was kind of really dodgy to use it for that kind of thing, for brainstorming, 'cause you didn't know... And it was also, like, there was this real problem with, like, hallucinating, where it would just make up stuff-

   12. CVClaire Vo8:11

       Mm-hmm

   13. FMFarhad Manjoo8:11

       ... and then you wouldn't know where it found that. Um, but now you can really, like, ask it for sources and, and then click and find those, and it be- it makes it much faster, and not only faster, like, you can get kind of deeper into the subjects because you're asking, you're asking kind of real questions, and you're not spending your time kind of just, like, reading the articles and trying to figure out what's happening.

5. 8:34 – 10:52

   How ChatGPT helps identify new angles and perspectives

   1. CVClaire Vo8:35

      Yeah, that was my question, which is, it seems like a really effective res-, uh, research tool, but it also seems like it could take you on a path where you could actually identify new, interesting things to explore or write about. So are you getting that effect by doing this sort of open-ended research?

   2. FMFarhad Manjoo8:52

      The better that it's gotten, the more, like, deeply it becomes kind of-

   3. CVClaire Vo8:57

      Mm

   4. FMFarhad Manjoo8:57

      ... integrated in my workflow. So before ChatGPT, the hardest part about writing an article was kind of figuring out where to start, and now I can just ask it sort of like, "What is the most kind of compelling argument or sort of the, the main points or things that I should kind of highlight?" I mean, I would have ideas of what, what, what to do that, but then I can ask it, and it can suggest some things that I may not have thought of, and then we could talk about those things. And, you know, it's not, it's not as good as, or as, like, it's not as good a writer as, like, an, an editor, a professional editor that I would work for, but it's, like, as good as, like, a research assistant who understands-

   5. CVClaire Vo9:40

      Mm-hmm

   6. FMFarhad Manjoo9:40

      ... uh, you know, who understands, like, the material. And so you can, you can get kind of deeper into it, and, like, it can suggest new ways or new, just new things you might not have thought of. And, um, the other thing is, it, like, doesn't have [chuckles] it doesn't have, like... You don't have to worry about hurting its feelings.

   7. CVClaire Vo10:00

      [chuckles]

   8. FMFarhad Manjoo10:01

      You could say, "That's dumb," like, "That's a dumb idea," or whatever, and, like, you could just have, like, this very, um, kind of free and honest conversation. It doesn't care about, like, you misspelling stuff, so, like, I type very quickly, and, like, there's lots of misspellings, but, like, it gets the gist of what I want. And so it feels very much like, you know, like chatting with someone, um, like texting someone, rather than kind of talking to, like, a computer. So it's like, it's, like, very close to, like, how I used to talk to, like, um, my research assistant at The New York Times. Like, probably it's not as smart as that person, but, like, it's maybe 80%, and it's, like, you know, great and instant and available all the time, so there are those, those advantages.

   9. CVClaire Vo10:47

      I like to say, "Always on, eager to please," like that's one of its-

   10. FMFarhad Manjoo10:50

       Right, right

   11. CVClaire Vo10:51

       ... competitive advantages.

6. 10:52 – 16:44

   Using ChatGPT to find alternatives to clichéd expressions

   1. CVClaire Vo10:52

      Yep.

   2. FMFarhad Manjoo10:53

      Yeah.

   3. CVClaire Vo10:53

      Well, let's actually get into the writing piece, because I think this is the most fascinating part, which is how you use these tools to find the right words and the right phrases for when you're working on an article. So can you walk us through a couple examples of that process?

   4. FMFarhad Manjoo11:09

      Okay, so this is based on something real that I was writing, and it involved... Let me paste it in here. So it involved this phrase, uh, you know, "pay the piper," which is like, you know, it's an idiom that has a definite meaning, but I didn't want to use that. It's-

   5. CVClaire Vo11:25

      Mm-hmm

   6. FMFarhad Manjoo11:25

      ... you know, kind of cliche, and people say that all the time. And so I would just take that and paste it in here, and this is something that, like, Google couldn't give me before. Like, you know, you could get a thesaurus, but that's not gonna have, give you sort of like this, um, like, an ex- like, it's not gonna help you search idioms. So, you know, like, these are kind of easy, f- foot the bill, pick up the tab, settle the bill, but it could get, like, a lot deeper than that. Like, I often have these extended conversations with it about, like, just, like, weird things in English that we, we think we know the origin of, but we don't really-

   7. CVClaire Vo12:07

      [chuckles]

   8. FMFarhad Manjoo12:07

      ... or sort of what it means exactly and how those dif- differ in, like, nuances. So, like, I had this sentence or something like it, which is involving "pay the piper" again, which is, "So for months, the mayor ignored public outrage..." Let me paste it in here, too, so-... over the polluted lake, eventually he realized he had to pay the piper. And that's just basically, like, not the correct usage of pay the piper, but it was, like, the closest I could think of. You know, like, it, you know, uh, any of those others, foot the bill or something. But I wanted something like... I want to say this in a catchier way, but also with some kind of metaphor that describes, like, paying for something or that, like, your previous actions-

   9. CVClaire Vo12:56

      Yeah

   10. FMFarhad Manjoo12:56

       ... are coming home to roost or something.

   11. CVClaire Vo12:59

       Mm-hmm.

   12. FMFarhad Manjoo12:59

       It's just, like, a very vague idea of the word you want. Um, and so then it suggests-

   13. CVClaire Vo13:06

       They gave you the chickens came home to roost. [chuckles]

   14. FMFarhad Manjoo13:07

       They gave me the chicken one, yeah. Like, the devil came to collect. I... That's not bad. I, I might use that, and it's not like something I've heard a lot before. So, so this one, the storm he'd been whistling past finally broke. I, I would be like, "That doesn't make any sense because you don't really whistle past a storm," and then we could just have, like, a conversation about it.

   15. CVClaire Vo13:30

       [upbeat music] This episode is brought to you by Vanta. Building a business? Achieving ISO 42001 compliance shows your customers that you're taking the necessary steps to ensure responsible usage and development of AI. But the process can be time-consuming, tedious, and very expensive. With Vanta, achieving compliance can be done in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost. Ninety-five percent of the required document templates are pre-built for you, accelerating the process, helping you demonstrate trustworthy AI practices, and scale your business. Start with Vanta's free ISO 42001 checklist, which gives you a breakdown of the compliance process and the road ahead. Download it at vanta.com/howiai. That's V-A-N-T-A.com slash howiai for the free Compliance for AI checklist. One thing this makes me reflect on that I'm curious your point of view is, you know, you and I are dialing into this from our respective homes, and I'm presuming in the past you would've done this with colleagues in a newsroom, and you could have these conversation live, and I, I'm imagining it's very beneficial to just have this partner for you to bounce ideas off and get this cycle on. Is that something that kind of in this post-remote world has also been a benefit for you?

   16. FMFarhad Manjoo14:48

       If I was working with colleagues, basically, I would, I would talk to them through Slack.

   17. CVClaire Vo14:52

       Mm-hmm.

   18. FMFarhad Manjoo14:52

       So it's essentially, like, a very similar interface. [chuckles]

   19. CVClaire Vo14:56

       Yeah.

   20. FMFarhad Manjoo14:56

       You know you're not talking to a colleague. You know you're not talking to a human, but in many ways, it sort of has that same function because the interface is similar. Like, instead of a Slack chat, this is a ChatGPT chat, but otherwise, like, we could sort of still have that conversation. So then I asked it, you know, like, "Can we fix that storm imagery to make it the, make it more coherent?" And it says... You know, it suggests some others, like, the storm he'd been pretending wasn't coming finally broke. Those are, like, much better, and, like, I had this thought, like, I think a fear that people have, you hear it from, like, professors, and you hear it from, like, professional writers and just creative people generally, is that, like, AI is gonna, like, replace you.

   21. CVClaire Vo15:40

       Mm-hmm.

   22. FMFarhad Manjoo15:40

       And that could easily happen, but, like, I find that it speeds up a lot of the things that you used to spend a lot of time thinking about. I used to be perfectionistic or persnickety about, like, the specific words I use in a paragraph before I could start writing the next one, and this allows me to just sort of, like, get to a point where I'm comfortable enough with it, and then I can really spend a lot of time, like, working on edits to, like, fix this particular word or sentence. It feels much more like you create a rough draft, and, like, because of this tool, it kind of... You form it into, like, something that you like more often. And, and it's really, like, my work. Like, even if it suggests some of these things, like, it's suggesting ideas, and then I'm, I'm, like, thinking about them and integrating them, and I don't feel like it's writing for me, which is something that I'd worried about. Like, where, you know, this is, like, "Is this really my work if I, I tossed it off to, like, an AI?" But it really feels like it's integrated into my writing rather than kind of replacing

7. 16:44 – 20:12

   The “super-thesaurus” technique for finding perfect words and idioms

   1. FMFarhad Manjoo16:44

      it.

   2. CVClaire Vo16:45

      Yeah, and what I love about what you're showing us here is I think there's a lot of fear that ChatGPT or AI-generated writing is slop, and it's all generic, and I love seeing this idea of you making the writing more specific and more impactful by using these tools instead of less. Could we... I love this, you know, idiom metaphor seeking, and you mentioned a thesaurus. Do you do this at the word level, too? [chuckles]

   3. FMFarhad Manjoo17:09

      Oh, yeah, I do it at the word level all the time, and basically, that's how I started. So, like, what are alternatives to outrage? So it gives me a whole bunch, and then, you know, and this I could have found in a thesaurus, but probably not all of these because they're not, like, exactly, you know, it, um, linked. Like, it would be hard to find all of these in a thesaurus. So outrage, like, fury, condemnation. Like, fury is a good word, and I feel like I would've found that in a thesaurus, but it's just so much faster and easier to ask this than, like, go on Google, type in the word, find the kind of correct link to, like, the good thesaurus or whatever. And then if it wasn't quite right, like, you couldn't get any-- you couldn't ask it about, like, other words kind of like it. So it's, it's basically like a, you know, a super-thesaurus, just at the word level. And, um, and you can also ask it if, like, your word is, like... If you're using a word and you're not quite sure that that word is correct, you can ask it if it's correct [chuckles] and, like, ask it sort of the shades of meaning about it and then, you know, find an alternative if it's not. So in that, in that way, it functions as, like, I've never... Not even a human editor you talk about, like-... the specific words you're writing for, like, you would talk, you know, for, like, a, a specific part of the article or when you're editing, but, like, as you're writing, like, getting the right word is, like, something that was- used to all happen in my head, and now you get a chance to, like, talk it out, and then, you know, get a real result at the end, which is, like, a tiny thing. Like, you, you changed outrage to furor, but, like, it used to take me, like, three minutes or something to figure out, like, some other word, and now I could do it in, you know, 10 seconds.

   4. CVClaire Vo19:04

      What I like about this super-thesaurus that I see here is it actually categorizes the words, depending on the intent you want to drive for it. So I'm seeing here there's kind of the straight-up, you know, synonyms for these words, and then there's what's more dramatic, what's more colloquial, what's more ironic, and that's a really interesting, I'm guessing, surface area to explore against.

   5. FMFarhad Manjoo19:26

      What if I chose, like, grief from this list, which is... totally does not work, um, and I could just ask it, "Does this work? For months, the mayor ignored public grief over the polluted lake." It should tell me that that's, like, not quite right.

   6. CVClaire Vo19:42

      I think if 4.0 doesn't tell you it's not quite right, 4.5 will definitely tell you. I've found it's a slightly more, uh, critical reader.

   7. FMFarhad Manjoo19:50

      Yeah. So it says, "That's close. Public grie- grief has a mournful, sorrowf- sorrowful tone, more about sorrow than anger." So it gives me an, a way to, like, keep grief in there while changing the sentence, um, slightly, but then it also gives me examples that don't involve grief, that, like... It's, it, it tells me essentially that that's not

8. 20:12 – 22:15

   Using AI as a first reader for draft evaluation

   1. FMFarhad Manjoo20:12

      quite the right word.

   2. CVClaire Vo20:13

      So you're able to, you know, go over the surface area, fight the- find the right for- words or phrases, use those, integrate them to your own writing, and then you're working with an editor, but you also have used these tools as a first reader. So how does... What does that process look like, or what are the things that you want out of AI as a first reader that you find really helpful as a writer?

   3. FMFarhad Manjoo20:37

      So the way that I've been using it recently is, like, I will start writing an article, and I'll write maybe, like, uh, I don't know, like, six or seven paragraphs, like, just, like, the start of it or so, and I wanna know if I'm, like, heading in the right direction. And that, you know, I wouldn't have called an editor to ask about that in the past because I'm not done with the article, and so I can pass it off, like, just those six paragraphs or whatever and say, you know, "Does this get my point across quickly enough? Is there a way you can, like, suggest a way to, like, get to this argument, like, much quicker? Am I sort of, like, doing too much, like, um, unnecessary commentary here?" You know, it's just basically, like, questions about, like, writing structure. It's not gonna find, like, l- logical inconsistencies or something in your, in your argument. Like, I don't think it's that sophisticated, but it will find, like, you know, better ways to say something if you pass it, like, a first version, and basically, so that's what I do. Like, I write several paragraphs, I pass it to it, I sort of, like, s- get its, um, input, kind of change the article, then I'll write more. Then I'll... You know, I'll basically, like, read the article, read the words by myself, and then sort of pass it off to that- to ChatGPT and just, like, work on, like, polishing after that. So in that sense, it's like a first reader, but it's also, like, reading while I'm writing it. Um, so it's, like, even more kind of integrated than, like, the first person that you would, um, like, present the f- kind of roughest draft

9. 22:15 – 25:44

   Lightning round

   1. FMFarhad Manjoo22:15

      to.

   2. CVClaire Vo22:15

      Well, I appreciate you... Now I'm trying to think of the right, right metaphor or idiom here. You know, raising the curtain or [chuckles] showing us-

   3. FMFarhad Manjoo22:24

      Yes

   4. CVClaire Vo22:24

      ... how you do this behind the scenes. Because I think something like writing is really myste- high-quality writing is really mysterious to folks.

   5. FMFarhad Manjoo22:32

      Yeah.

   6. CVClaire Vo22:32

      And I think you've shown us how technology can have a role in that, that stills allow- allows someone like you with an, an, you know, amazing, independent voice write great stuff that has impact on the public, and I think that's pretty, pretty cool. So I'm gonna wrap up with a couple lightning-round questions. I have to ask the first one because I've been observing you copying and pasting a bunch. What is one thing, if you had a magic wand, and you could have a tool that would make this process easier for you, you'd love to see? Is there something that you want?

   7. FMFarhad Manjoo23:02

      One of them is it, like, doesn't have, like, very good persistent memory, so, like, if I talk to it about something yesterday, and then we get back to it, and I'm maybe in a different chat, it, I, I sort of have to go back and look at that chat and kind of figure things out, and I can't say, like, "Tell me all the things we talked about last week and, um, about this article." Um, another one is, like, I would love if they had, like, the ability to share the screen so that I could just, instead of copying and pasting, I could just ask it about, like, the sentence over here in a different app, and it does for some apps, but I don't think it does for, like, all. So you can- so Cursor is this programming app that you can connect to it, but, like, it doesn't for most apps, and so kind of improving that feature would be great 'cause then I wouldn't need to copy and paste, and it would sort of know what's on my screen at any time.

   8. CVClaire Vo23:53

      You are the first person that I've seen as a true writer of, uh, non-technical documents show a little snippet into using Cursor for writing, so I think that's a really exciting little, uh, tidbit you showed us there. Okay, my last, uh, lightning-round question, I... Everyone has a different answer. When AI does not do what you want, it's getting the wrong answer, or it's just not responding, what is your strategy? Do you cajole? Do you bully? Do you yell? Do you compliment? How do you get AI to get over its own hurdle and do what it w- what you want it to?

   9. FMFarhad Manjoo24:26

      Yeah, I find myself being, like, very kind of brusque with it, like I have... There's this, like, freedom of saying, like, "You're totally..." Like, I would tell a person, like, "You're on the wrong track. Like, let's think about something else," but I can just tell it, like, "This is a very stupid thing. Please, like, let's talk about something else." Like, and it... So you could be much more direct with it, and I feel like that really works, like, being direct, but sometimes, if it's... Like, there are lots of things where it just can't help you, and I feel like I have to figure out a place at some point where, like, we're talking in circles, and it's not really, like, helping me, and then I kind of have to do it without the AI.

   10. CVClaire Vo25:04

       Well, this has been super interesting to watch. Thank you so much for giving us an honest look into how AI is changing and improving the craft of writing.

   11. FMFarhad Manjoo25:13

       Cool. Thank you so much. This was fun to talk about.

   12. CVClaire Vo25:15

       [upbeat music] Thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed the show, please like and subscribe here on YouTube, or even better, leave us a comment with your thoughts. You can also find this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Please consider leaving us a rating and review, which will help others find the show. You can see all our episodes and learn more about the show at howiaipod.com. See you next time. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 25:45