Big, big news week for AI (plus post-TechWeek replays)


📊 "Generative AI is expected to give the average worker 275 additional hours per year to dedicate to high-value tasks, improving productivity 15.5% by 2038.”

- p.13 of Microsoft’s report, ‘Economic Opportunity of Generative AI in New Zealand’

Hello Reader,

Last week, I taught a bunch of workshops for TechWeekNZ. This was my 7th year teaching a workshop for TechWeek, but I taught more this week than ever before. In addition to the webinar Be More Human: Do the Work that Matters Most with Generative AI, I also led workshops for:

  • GenAI for Marketing
  • Prompt Engineering Techniques
  • Build A Bot Workshop: Make Your Own Custom GPT
  • Live Panel Discussion: Latest Advances in Generative AI

Big thanks to the hundreds of people who attended my workshops last week. We recorded the panel, and I'll share a recording when it's ready.

If you'd like to watch the webinar replay, you can do so here:

https://youtu.be/_PsEgVEzjoI

In the post-event survey, I asked, 'What was your biggest takeaway?' and the attendees gave this feedback:

  • The webinar highlighted the differences between human skills and AI, showing how we can use AI to boost productivity. It also stressed the importance of learning and adapting to AI to stay relevant.
  • It was all fantastic, I had several incredible insights. One that was relevant to my journey at the moment with a programme I am delivering was the 5 step creative process and which parts were human
  • phases of ai, capabilities and thought leadership :)
  • Ability to refine responses, to drill down on what I want, request a restart
  • How I need to better at prompting and think outside the box to ask chat GPT to look in.
  • I still hate genAI. I hate it so much
  • that AI is going to help me be better! Not be a force to compete with
  • The skill of discernment
  • The AI and Human partnership - and which bits of creativity employ one or the other.
  • The power of ‘power user’ and prompting.
  • parallel prompting

If you'd like to review an AI Summary of the event (because, hey, this is the future of work) you can read it here.

Did you notice? Someone who attended the webinar, stayed till the end, and filled out the survey, said they hated GenAI. So much.

I see this as a good sign. We are still so early.

The adoption of this technology is inevitable. But if the Luddites who actively hate this technology are showing up to be educated, that means they know it is inevitable, too.

🛠️ Webinar Replay

video preview

📰 New AI News This Week

  • Google I/O announced new Google AI Pro and Ultra plans, LearnLM and NotebookLM upgrades, and too many more updates to list - just chat with this NotebookLM
  • Anthropic launched Claude 4, with Opus and Sonnet setting new standards in reasoning, coding, and agent workflows (and they also activated AI Safety Level 3 protocols)
  • Microsoft is integrating MCP natively into Windows 11, demonstrating their shift from apps to agents with Foundry

In addition to TechWeek, I've been leading a lot of training workshops for Agentic Intelligence, where I have recently joined as their Head of Learning & Enablement. You can see some of the workshops I lead here: https://agenticintelligence.co.nz/training

Your GenAI Trainer,

Caelan Huntress

[email protected]

+64 027 575 1345

Follow Me On:

📈

Upcoming Live Workshops

Register Now→

🎨

Video Tutorial Library

Start Learning →

📘

Join a Webinar Series

Upskill Now

You've subscribed to a newsletter, downloaded a lead magnet, or attended an event with Caelan Huntress.

You can unsubscribe if you don't like this newsletter, but you will miss out on dope memes in the future.

PO Box 8081, Riccarton, Christchurch 8440
Unsubscribe · Preferences

GenAI Training Newsletter

Generative AI improves your Productivity, Creativity, and Strategy - but only if you build the GenAI Habit. Learning how to incorporate GenAI Training into your day will help knowledge workers prepare for the future of work.

Read more from GenAI Training Newsletter
Escher AI

With infinite answers now available, asking the right question becomes priceless. Hello Reader, Most people think prompt engineering is about getting better at telling AI what to do. But the real power move is asking AI what it needs from you. With infinite information on tap, AI doesn’t struggle with answers. It struggles with ambiguity. Precision gives it power. The sharper your prompt, the smarter your AI responds. To get the smartest prompts, ask AI to generate the prompt for you. Then...

'The new workflow for me is I think with AI and work with my colleagues.' - Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft Hello Reader, LLMs are changing fast. What worked well last week might be garbage to use today. If you're still using just one AI model for everything, it's like playing a round of golf with just one club. You need to be able to select the best tool for the job. This 3-minute tutorial shows you how to test multiple LLMs—side-by-side, in real time—so you can instantly see which one's...

'We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.' - Archilochus Hello Reader, You know that feeling when you're juggling five ideas, six tabs, and a dozen half-finished chats with ChatGPT? Your brain is buzzing, your files are scattered, and your best insights are lost in the mess. Now imagine turning ChatGPT into your command center. All your notes, files, and conversations—organized by project, remembered forever. As of now, Projects are only available...