Using AI to Read Books
Never read a book again thanks to ChatGPT?
TLDR:
ChatGPT has read millions of books, so you can read books through it.
Traversing and searching within books requires just asking ChatGPT the right prompts, eg. “Summarise Chapter 2 of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World”.
For now you have millions of books accessible for $0 through ChatGPT. Naturally it’s only a matter of time until laws around copyright come in and change this.
This week I’m going back to the topic of AI because it’s the gift that keeps on giving, and more recently I’ve seen people throw it under the broader topic of Web3.
Since ChatGPT came on the scene I’ve been using it non-stop, just as millions of others have too, and have found all sorts of use cases for it. I wrote a previous post on how I used it as a business assistant for sales and dev work (linked below) and recently I found a pretty incredible new use for it.
Founders read a lot of books
As a builder and founder in Web3, I often read business books to help me solve problems that come up along my entrepreneurial journey.
I’ve been focused a lot on the sales and marketing side of the new product that we’re building for Web3 Artists at Token Page. As we look to get our messaging right for the product, a sales friend of mine recommended I read a couple of books:
“Finding the Right Message” by Jennifer Havice
"Obviously Awesome" by April Dunford
I trust this friend and felt compelled to buy the books. But before just jumping in and paying I wanted to know if they were the right books for the moment I’m in, after all there’s thousands of business books out there.
Enter ChatGPT
My immediate instinct was to jump onto ChatGPT, my newest business assistant, and ask what it knew about each book.
I started simple by checking if it was up for the task:
As expected ChatGPT was prepared for this. It’s given me deep knowledge on Civil and Common Law legal systems, Middle Eastern history, Web3 software development and niche business advice, it seemed obvious that it would be able to give me a couple of short book summaries - and sure enough it gave me what I wanted:
While this seemed like a simple enough ask, what I didn’t expect was the depth at which it could go beyond this.
Digging Deeper
Considering ChatGPT said “Finding the Right Message” was a ‘practical’ guide, my next logical step was to try to understand the book’s exact ‘practical’ advice.
Incredibly ChatGPT broke down all the core elements of the book and allowed me to get an overarching view into the exact practical elements that Jennifer Havice describes in her book!
Naturally this made me more curious and I probed further to see just how far into the book I could get without needing to actively buy it, starting with the basics:
One Chapter at a time, one topic at a time
Sure enough ChatGPT was able to give me the exact titles for each chapter in the book. So I began traversing the book 1 chapter at time, giving me the summaries for each chapter.
I also tested its ability to traverse the book based on topics, rather than specific chapters, and sure enough it didn’t disappoint.
More Books
I tried the same with "Obviously Awesome" by April Dunford and had the same success.
And that led me down the process of trying with a bunch of other books. I tested more business books but also started giving a go with fiction books like “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, and sure enough ChatGPT didn’t disappoint.
What began as a simple process to check if I should buy a couple business books, turned into a whole new way for me to use ChatGPT!
I was able to use it navigate any book one chapter a time and one topic at a time, and break down chapters and topics further as needed, finding the exact piece of information I wanted without needing to manually search through a book - or even own it!
Never read a book again?
So what’s the moral of the story here, should you never read or pay for a book again?
Well of course not!
Nothing can replace reading an original book with all the nuance that its author created in the way they organised its words, chapters and topics. Plus if we don’t pay for the books we like then its unlikely authors will write new books. In fact, there will inevitably be some pushback from authors when they realise how ChatGPT can essentially bypass their copyright.
However, for now this is an incredible tool in your arsenal to make use of!
You can access millions of books just through asking an AI the right questions. In other words, a vast breadth of human knowledge is accessible for a total of $0!
Really it’s only a matter of time until someone wraps this up into a tidy mobile or web app for busy people to breeze through books, and builds a multi-million dollar business from it - at which point authors will complain and laws will need to catch up.
But for now you can “read” through any book by just asking ChatGPT directly!