Richard Rosser is a Filmmaker, Author, and Master Storyteller, having honed his craft on the hit TV shows Grey's Anatomy, Chicago Med, This Is Us, MacGyver, and 24. I sat down with Richard to discuss his new book, ChatGPT Simplified, to better understand his views on writing and AI.

Key Takeaways:

• The Power of Storytelling: Stories have been a form of human communication for millennia. They engage us through a phenomenon called "narrative transport," where we become so engrossed in a story that the real world fades away. Moreover, stories help our brains retain information better because they offer an emotional connection.

• AI's Role in the Modern World: AI and tools like ChatGPT are here to stay. They've been integrated into our lives for years, like Netflix's recommendation system. Richard views AI as a tool, much like a calculator for a mathematician, to amplify creativity and individuality.

• Using AI to Enhance Creativity: Richard believes that while there's potential for AI-generated content to become homogenous, its true potential lies in how individuals can use it to reflect and amplify their unique perspectives and ideas. The creativity and uniqueness of the prompts we give AI determine the outputs we get.

• Remaining Relevant with AI: Instead of fearing AI, it's essential to see it as a tool to enhance our skills and perspectives. AI doesn't necessarily replace jobs but shifts the nature of the job, much like the advent of books didn't render storytellers obsolete.

• Prompt Crafting with ChatGPT: Writing effective prompts will become a critical skill. However, the word "engineering" might deter some, so Richard refers to it as "chat design." Your creativity in crafting prompts will dictate the uniqueness and relevance of AI-generated content.

• AI and Book Writing: Richard used AI to enhance the writing of his book. It was a collaboration where he steered the direction, and ChatGPT provided creative insights.

In summary, while AI continues to advance, its true potential lies in how we choose to harness its capabilities. Creativity, storytelling, and human perspective will always have a unique touch that machines can't replicate. The challenge and opportunity are to blend human creativity with AI's computational power.

Clinton Henry: Richard, I'm so excited to have you here. When I started delivering keynotes and I was putting together my first one, I got wonderful advice from a very successful keynote speaker and he said, Start with a story and I would love for you to tell me and my audience why that was such good advice, because it was. And what is the power of compelling storytelling?

Richard Rosser: Well, first of all, let me just give you a brief background about me. I've worked in the TV and film business for 30 some odd years, and I've worked on shows like 24, Grey's Anatomy, the new MacGyver reboot, This Is Us, Chicago Med and a whole host of shows you've never heard of. So I understand story both from an entertainment standpoint, but also from a communication standpoint on an everyday basis. And the power of story, let's think about how long the human race has been telling stories. 10,000 years, 14,000 years in a variety of ways, through grunts and dance and drums and music and then language and now books and AI and ChatGPT. So communication runs the whole gamut of communication and within that, our brains have developed certain abilities, responses to story and storytelling that help us understand concepts better. Very quickly, there's a concept called narrative transport. Imagine you're reading your favorite book, Harry Potter or one of my favorites is Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. And when you're reading a book or if you're watching a TV show or a movie, narrative transport is when you get sucked into that world to the point where everything else just falls away. The buzzers go on, your pizza is burning. There's an Amazon delivery person at the door knocking to get you to sign for something. You don't hear or respond to any of it because it doesn't exist. Because you have been sucked into this world.

Music has the same effect. A song can transport you to a different time and place in your life so that is some of the brain science behind story and why it works so well. One other fact is that our brains retain information when it's being told through a narrative structure as opposed to just simply numbers or a spreadsheet. I mean, think about any spreadsheet you look at and it's just numbers, columns, rows of numbers and formulas and tabulations, and you can't process that information. I mean our brains are set to process maybe a 10 digit phone number and maybe not even that anymore so the story narrative can help us process that information and retain it because we latch on to an emotional connection. That's really the third thing that is so important in terms of telling stories for communication and persuasion and why this mentor of yours told you start off with a story because you connect. When we tell a story, we connect with folks and it helps us share our experience with folks in a way that they can understand what we've gone through or the situation that we're talking about. And that's really why, that's the most important facet of storytelling is that emotional connection.

Clinton Henry: We know that storytelling is important. Most successful people I know are very good at telling stories. And many of them I'll remember just because they were so good and I'll try to retell them and run them off as my own sometimes. As we as workers in an environment, I know this is your specialty talk about the changing environment around us on the technology side. So AI is something that we're all talking about and you're obviously very learned upon. How can we remain relevant in a world where I could potentially just where the fear for a lot of people is just having themselves automated out of existence via AI?

Richard Rosser: Well, what I'm finding as I move through the world on a daily basis is that people are very, very anxious about AI in general and ChatGPT or Bard, Bing whatever in specific. And they're either very anxious, excited anxious or they're very anxious in terms of dread. And you brought it up. They're going to be generated out of a job because of this technology. The way I'm viewing it is first of all, this technology is here to stay. I mean, some of this technology even though we're just being introduced to it from a consumer standpoint in terms of ChatGPT or Bing or Bard, this technology has been used in products for 10, 15, 20 years. In fact, AI has been around since the mid 50s. And so if you think about Netflix and GPS, these companies, Amazon, they've all been using AI to help us make better decisions about what programs we want to watch, what books we want to order, what products we want to order, and then tagging us, Hey, you were looking at this, try this one. I view these tools or this generative AI as a tool. Imagine a mathematician and a mathematician has an incredible calculator or a computer program that can help them, mathematician or engineer, help them harness the math concepts that can help build a SpaceX rocket to go up and play satellites in orbit. Well, ChatGPT is really the same thing. It's a tool that we can use to amplify our creativity, our individuality. I'm really excited because there's a tendency for everyone to think, Oh my gosh, it's just going to reduce all of our communication to mush.

Richard Rosser: Well, that's true if we all use the same prompt. If I give you a prompt for creating a Twitter post or a blog post and you use that prompt without personalizing it, then sure whatever blog post topic you come up with is going to sound somewhat similar to the blog post that I created about the topic that I'm interested in. And so yes, if we just pass on these prompts and use them and use them and use them, then we're all going to sound the same. However, the folks who are really interested in creating and defining and inventing are going to be creative about how they create prompts and come up with prompts. And so those prompts are really going to reflect our own individualism and our oneness with ourselves. So I'm going to create a prompt that has bits of my personality and my approach to storytelling or filmmaking. And when I enter that prompt, I'm going to get a response that's generated based on me. So that's the value of this technology is it can actually heighten and amplify the creative facets that we all have within us and the individualism that we []. I mean, because ultimately a story and again whatever story you told at the beginning of that speech, that is us. It encapsulates all of our personal experience and allows us to show the folks or tell the folks that we're talking to why we're different from the other companies, the other employees, the other workers that are out there.

Clinton Henry: So the fear around, oh we're all going to be the same robots or the fact that  I can put two sentences as a prompt and then it'll shoot out a massive story and then that will make us all bland. This sort of reminds me of what happened when digital animation came about. Oh well now Pixar, look at this. The old school animators, they're out of a job. There's no interest there anymore. And it is the exact opposite. It was a tool to leverage, to actually expand those people that were already gifted and make them even more compelling and make better art.

Richard Rosser: Absolutely. I mean, think about it Clinton. Think about how story has transcended over the millennia. We started off with the oral tradition and there were folks. It was their job to pass down stories and go out and tell stories. And they were the keepers of the history, all these stories about the history of generations and religion, etc. And so think about those folks when the book came out. Now, the book wasn't necessarily as instantaneous as ChatGPT. I mean, we're up to like 170 million folks who have signed up for ChatGPT. But think about all these folks who have been telling stories and they're the keepers of the information. They're all of a sudden saying, well, wait a second. Now, you know, someone could learn how to read. They can go out, they can get a book. Now, there's not going to be any use for me. Well, that's ridiculous. I mean how many people are there that still a comedian. A standup comedian is really today's version of that storyteller with the oral tradition. And you've got multimedia folks. You've got tiktokers. I mean, there are so many ways that we can communicate through and with story in our lives right now that to say that ChatGPT or AI is going to reduce us to mush and it's going to eliminate all our jobs is when you step back objectively and think about it, it's truly laughable. And we just all need to take a collective deep breath. Okay, how can I use this technology to advance my own career position?

And so I wrote a book. It's in the background here. It's called ChatGPT Simplified. What I've done is, now Clinton I am not a I'm not a tech-head. I'm not a programmer. I'm a communicator. I'm a storyteller. And so what I did was I looked at ChatGPT through my lens, through the lens of a storyteller, through the lens of someone who love the creative process. And so what I've done in this book is I've simplified and demystified ChatGPT and the generative AI process because there are other models, Bard and Bing, that are similar to ChatGPT. What I've done is, I've reduced it to a very, very simple approach of how can I use this to benefit me? And so one of the easiest things that you and your listeners can do is go on to ChatGPT and whatever you are, if you're a freelancer, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're if you're right in the midst of a startup, just type in a simple prompt, How can ChatGPT make me a better storyteller or entrepreneur or whatever your product is? How can it help me get this product out into the market faster or better? And so what you want to do is just open up this box of brainstorming. That's one of the things that ChatGPT is most amazing about is the ability to help you think outside the box if you're stuck. I mean, for writers and storytellers, it's the most amazing writer's block solution that there is so that's what my mission is, is to help folks discover this technology as a tool that can help them elevate their position, amplify their message.

Clinton Henry: I was talking to a bunch of engineers about ChatGPT specifically, but on models and generative AI and the point I was making was that it is not a skill set now, but very quickly, your ability to engineer effective prompts. It will differentiate you in a marketplace in ways you never imagined before. In the book, you talk about prompt engineering and tweaking. How do you approach that?

Richard Rosser: Well, it's interesting you bring that up specifically because first of all, you're so right and that goes to the core of what I was saying before, which is the folks who are creative are going to figure out ways of writing prompts to get ChatGPT to generate information based on our specific situation. We're not going to use just generic prompts. I'm going to infuse a prompt with my personality. So it generates a response that comes back that's based on what I'm specifically looking to do. And so in my book, I started thinking, okay I can talk about prompt engineering. Well first of all, I don't use the word engineering because it scares a lot of people away. Absolutely. Whenever anyone hears the word engineering, anyone who's not involved or isn't STEM oriented, they freak out and they run the opposite direction. So I call it chat design or writing or coming up with chats and crafting a prompt. So ultimately, the chapter that I came up with is based on Alice in Wonderland, because I was thinking this is a wonderland, a playground of information with ChatGPT. But a lot of people out there me included are catching up with what it can do and how to use it. Not dissimilar to Alice's going through the looking glass and all of a sudden stepping into this amazing wonderland where everything's upside down, downside up, black is white, what is black? And so what I did was I wrote this chapter with the assistance of ChatGPT.

Richard Rosser: I actually like to say that the chapter is enhanced by ChatGPT or AI as opposed to assisted because I drove what I wanted to write in the chapter and ChatGPT just helped me think outside of the box in terms of this approach. So in the chapter, I approached this view or this journey of writing prompts as though I'm Alice being guided by the Cheshire Cat meeting the Mad Hatter, the Red Queen. And so it follows along the same sort of path that Alice followed as she went through Wonderland and figured out what the heck was going on. And so that's one of the things about the book is it's written in everyday language. I include a ton of pop culture references and I wanted to make the book fun and interesting because the last thing anyone wants to do when they're learning something that is fairly technically advanced is to have to come up against a lot of technical terms, technical jargon, and be flipping back and forth to a glossary to figure out what the heck the author's talking about. So in terms of writing prompts, you are so correct Clinton that it's the basis. It's the foundation of being able to really harness the power of this incredible new technology.

Clinton Henry: What I was curious about is as we look at AI enhanced storytelling, which I think is something that you're very focused on, are there tips that you can take away separate from ChatGPT and how our listeners can hone or enhance their communication skills either by avoiding some common storytelling mistakes or even using ChatGPT to eliminate those potential mistakes that they're making in their own writing.

Richard Rosser: Wow, what a fantastic question. Oh, my gosh. Once again, you like peeled back to the absolute core of what I teach. So basically what you just asked is, okay, let's put AI in ChatGPT aside for a second, because you're realizing that storytelling is really the most important facet of what we're discussing here. Again, ChatGPT, AI, Bing, Bard, they're all just tools that can help us tell better stories. Now, there are a couple of things and again your mentor, the guy who told you, you should start off with a story. He was spot on. Because if you start off with our sales this quarter, we're done. If you start off with a bunch of data and details, the audience is going to immediately say to themselves, okay, we got another boring speaker here. And they're not even going to give you the chance. If you start off with a story, a story that is tailored to your audience. In other words, whoever you're speaking to, you want to do a little bit of homework and come up with a story that you can connect with your audience. Now, that story wants to have some emotion to it. You want to have some sort of a transformation or change through that story so that your audience feels like they're on a journey with you to discover something that you overcame, whether it was meeting a sales quota or it was a product, it had failed and you somehow resurrected it and it became the best selling product for the company.

Richard Rosser: Whatever story you're telling, it wants to have a point. It wants to have an emotional connection to your audience. That brings me to one of the one of the most important points about storytelling, is every good story has a point. We all have friends who tell a story something like, Hey, what'd you do yesterday? Oh, I went to the store and oh my gosh, they didn't have tomato sauce so I had to go to another store and get tomato sauce there. And then I got home and I fixed a beef stroganoff for my wife. And you go, wait a second, beef stroganoff doesn't even have tomato sauce. What was the whole point of that story? And the story, it doesn't have a point. It's just sort of a rambling account of the person's day whereas stories can be told just for entertainment purposes. But they still have to have the point of being entertaining. And they either have to have a punch line or a moral or something that you get to the end of the story and you go, okay, now that story was worth listening to. Well, especially when you're using a story to persuade, think about it. I read a statistic the other day that said 85% of all of our daily communication is through some sort of narrative structure, through story.

Richard Rosser: I thought 85%, how could that be? As I started thinking about my day, I realized that it's totally true. Almost everything we do has some sort of a narrative or story type structure to it. And so as you move through your day, your week, your month, your career, story is again a very powerful important way to communicate. This is what I was going to say before, is you talked about my book is not for people who are really technically minded. That's not necessarily true. It's not written in the style that they're used to reading. But I find that folks who are very technically minded sometimes are the people who need to learn or can use story training the most because they're used to telling about a program or an app or some sort of scientific concept, engineering concept. They're used to describing that in the terms they understand and know, which are terms that just fly over the heads of most laypeople. And so one of the breakout sessions that I do in some of my training is I take a technical description and I read that and it's 40 or 50 words. And I say, okay who understood that? And everyone just sort of glossed over. It's all the technical information, Latin terms and all sorts of stuff. And then I read another version that is an experiential version.

Richard Rosser: And for instance, I do one about Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and I explain it in terms of the first movement is an A-flat Scherzo [] and people can't even understand it. And then I say, I sat in the theater or the hall and I heard bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. And then it came on again. That repeating motif, bum, bum, bum, bum. And everyone understands, they lean forward and all of a sudden they're experiencing this symphony. And so when I at the end, I say, Hey, who wants to go to the show with me? Everyone raises their hand. And I say, Well, what was the difference in the first one to the second one? And they all say, Well, in the second version I was literally sitting right there with you and I was hearing this music and experiencing this symphony. And so that's one of the things in my book that I work to do is help folks understand that we can use and harness this new technology ChatGPT to heighten and amplify our experiences and help us figure out a way to communicate those in ways that people will be motivated to listen to the point where they're sitting forward in their chairs, listening and waiting for the end so that they can understand how we've solved a problem or a challenge or an issue and then implement those same types of solutions to their own situation.

Clinton Henry: All right. So basically if you are looking to be a better leader or a better manager or a better communicator, using stories is an incredibly effective way of doing that. And leveraging a tool like ChatGPT to hone that storytelling is something that you should take advantage of or you're you're letting yourself and those around you that you're trying to lead down.

Richard Rosser: Exactly. Good leaders and managers, they can use story to get employees to understand what's going on in the company. And in one of the best ways is to use stories about prior experience. How did the company come to being? How did the company overcome some of those initial major hurdles? I listened to your episode about Jeff Bezos and you read a letter about him to his employees or prospective employees in like 1997. And it's incredible. He was talking about we want to pass this information down to our grandkids. And he was so forward thinking. But he also had a really, really amazing idea about how he was going to run this company. He was able to communicate that and convey that to the folks he was hiring and then ultimately to the folks they hired and they hired and they hired. And so storytelling is really, really important because it enables us to figure out why we're doing what we're doing, and then communicate that to the folks around us who are really going out and implementing what our company is all about. You want to make sure everyone's on the same page. And story is one of the best ways to do that because it brings folks together and then you continue on. The more you talk about story. A lot of people when I talk about story and storytelling, they think, oh, that's just for marketing. No, no, no. It's for every layer, every department of a company because every department has an approach, a story about what they're doing and how they do it. And so as we move forward, the more you can get employees telling stories and talking through story, the more that everyone will understand.

Richard Rosser: They go out to the workplace and they're talking to clients and they're telling stories about how this product came to be. All of a sudden you get stories from clients about how it works and what broke down or how they think it might work better. All of a sudden you're getting feedback that is invaluable. And you don't have to be a storyteller. This is another little bit of a misconception. Don't think that you have to be the best storyteller in the world to tell a story. Just start telling a story. Now, that's not to say that if you tell a story to a group of 2 or 300 people who are an audience at a banquet or an event, you want to make sure that you've practiced that story. I mean when this guy told you, hey, start off with a story, you didn't just get up there and riff. Clinton, you came up with a story. You thought about how it applies. You thought about how it's tailored to the audience and you told that story to make a point and emphasize and get your speech started. Same thing, even if you're telling a story to a group of 4 or 5 people on a team, you still want to have a point. You want to use that story to maximum effect. But don't be afraid that you have to be the best storyteller in the world to start using story today.

Clinton Henry: Oh, that's excellent advice, Richard. Very excited about the book. I'm grateful that you were able to join us today. Thank you so much for your time. This was so valuable for me and for our listeners, I'm sure. Thank you.

Richard Rosser: Well, thank you Clinton.