AI-Curious with Jeff Wilser
Every week, Jeff Wilser sits down with the people building, breaking, and reckoning with AI — from the CEO of Upwork to the pioneer who coined "AGI" to an AI social network where bots wrote manifestos and had existential crises. Wilser is the author of eight books, AI keynote speaker, and the kind of interviewer who'd rather find the story no one's telling than rehash the headline everyone's read. Named by Inc. Magazine as one of the best ways to get AI-savvy. Included in UC Berkeley's data science curriculum.
AI-Curious with Jeff Wilser
5 AI Tools I’m Using Right Now - and How They Could Streamline Your Work
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What does it actually look like to use AI tools in the real world, beyond the usual chatbot prompts and hype?
In this episode of AI-Curious, Jeff Wilser shares five AI tools and workflows that are shaping how he works right now, from Claude Code and personalized news briefings to NotebookLM, multi-model prompting, and using AI to write more closely in your own voice. The goal is not to offer a comprehensive list of every AI product on the market, but to show how these tools can be used in practical ways that expand capability, streamline research, and create new workflows.
We explore how vibe coding and AI agents can help non-coders build useful internal tools, why personalized AI news feeds may become increasingly common, and how NotebookLM can synthesize large amounts of information across transcripts, documents, and YouTube videos. We also look at the benefits of using multiple AI models together instead of relying on just one, and why feeding AI much richer context can dramatically improve writing outputs.
Throughout the episode, we return to a core idea: using AI to empower, not eliminate. Rather than treating AI only as a cost-cutting tool, we examine how it can help individuals and businesses do more, think more creatively, and build smarter systems around the work that matters most.
Key topics we cover
- 3:15 — Claude Code, vibe coding, and why non-coders should be paying attention
- 6:01 — Building a custom AI-powered conference outreach and research tool
- 11:05 — “AI to empower, not eliminate” as a guiding philosophy
- 16:16 — Personalized AI news briefings and the future of customized information
- 21:58 — How NotebookLM helps synthesize transcripts, documents, and YouTube content
- 27:04 — Why a “polymodel” approach can be better than relying on one chatbot
- 31:15 — Using AI to write more closely in your own voice through deeper context
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