OK, so imagine for a second, you go out and you
buy a Ferrari. It's sitting in your driveway.
Italian leather, the engine is purring. It's
capable of these incredible speeds. Right. But
every single time you get in it, you never shift
out of first gear. That's a painful image. You're
just putting around the neighborhood at 10 miles
an hour. But I mean, according to the data we're
looking at today, that is exactly what is happening
with artificial intelligence. Is that right?
Over 90 % of paying users, so people actually
dropping $20 a month, have never even opened
the settings menu. Wow. Or driving a supercar
in first gear. I have to admit, when I saw that
stat, I felt a little called out. I'm definitely
guilty of just opening the window and typing,
assuming the defaults are good enough. We all
are, I think. Welcome to the deep dive. Today,
we're analyzing a guide called Mastering the
Interface. But this isn't just a tech review,
is it? It's more a conversation about how we
interact with intelligence itself. It is, yeah.
And the mission for this deep dive is really
moving from being a casual user to a power user.
Right. And the most interesting part, I think,
from the source material is that you don't need
to learn to code. You just need to know where
the buttons are. which is fortunate because my
coding skills are nonexistent. So looking at
our roadmap, we're going to move through this
logically. We'll start with the foundation. So
the privacy and memory settings that I think
most people are just afraid to touch. Then we'll
move to the art of the prompt. How to structure
your language so the machine actually understands
you. Right. And then we'll cover the productivity
tools that turn it from a toy into a real workspace.
And finish up with the advanced stuff. Vision,
web browsing, and these new agent capabilities.
It's about moving from a passive consumer to
an architect of the tool. Exactly. So let's unpack
this. We start with the foundation. The source
material calls this fixing the foundation before
you build the house. And it starts with something
that I think generates a lot of anxiety. Privacy.
Right. There's this lingering question. people
have, like, is the AI watching me? Is it reading
my diary? Yeah. And the reality, according to
this guide, is that unless you change a very
specific setting, OpenAI is using your chats
to train its future models. So if I'm uploading
a confidential business plan or, I don't know,
venting about a relationship. It's potentially
going right into the mix. Yeah. to make the model
smarter for everyone else. See, I think the reason
people don't touch this stuff is fear. They think
if they mess with the settings, they'll, like,
break the bot. Of course. But the guide is pretty
specific here. It's actually really simple. What
does it say? It's under data controls. You go
to settings, then data controls, and you just
turn off the toggle that says, improve the model
for everyone. Just a switch. A simple switch.
But there has to be a trade -off, right? If I
turn that off, does the tool get worse for me?
Not immediately. No. But you're essentially opting
out of that collective learning process. You
kind of become a ghost to this system. For most
people, though, especially in a business context,
that trade -off is absolutely worth it for the
security. That makes sense. Secure the perimeter
first. But then, once you've done that, you have
to look at how the AI remembers you. This memory
feature. I've had moments where it brings up
something I said three weeks ago, and it feels
a little, I don't know, a little black mirror.
It can be jarring, yeah. But the guide points
out this isn't magic. It's just a database. And
you have control over it. What do you mean? You
can actually go into the settings under personalization
and view the specific list of things it knows
about you. So I can see a list that says, like,
user likes sci -fi novels or user is a vegetarian.
Exactly. And if there's something wrong, let's
say it thinks you're a lawyer because you asked
one legal question three months ago. Right. You
just hit the little trash can icon next to it
and delete it. You can even wipe the whole memory
if you want a fresh start. That's useful because,
I mean, I still wrestle with... what I call prompt
drift. I'll be working on a podcast script and
suddenly it starts giving me advice like I'm
a Python developer because of something I asked
yesterday. Right. It feels like I'm constantly
wrestling the steering wheel back. That's the
context pollution problem. Yeah. And managing
that memory list is exactly how you clear the
air. Okay. So that leads us to the about me section
or custom instructions. Now I've seen this in
the menu, but I usually just ignore it. Why does
the source material put so much weight on this?
Because it solves the problem of repetition.
Without this, every single time you start a new
chat, you have to establish context from scratch.
It's like having to introduce yourself to a friend
every time you meet them. Hi, I'm Dave. I like
podcasts. Exactly. Custom instructions lets you
do that introduction one time, and it sticks.
There are two boxes. Box one is, what should
chat GPT know about you? Okay. And box two is,
how would you like chat GPT to respond? The guide
had a really clever example of this. Something
about a junior English teacher in Vietnam. Yes.
In their instructions, they specified that they
teach 10 -year -olds. And crucially, in that
second box, they ask for short sentences, no
academic jargon, and please... Use bullet points.
And once that's saved, every answer is automatically
tailored for a 10 -year -old. You don't have
to keep typing. Explain this simply. It just
does it. It creates a consistent persona. It
stops the drift. There's one more feature in
this section, temporary chat, the so -called
incognito mode. Right. Be honest. Does anyone
actually use this? Or is it just for when you
have, like, embarrassing medical questions you
don't want in your history? Well, the medical
questions are a totally valid use case. But it's
also for those one -off queries. You don't want
polluting your memory. Like what? If you're asking
for a recipe for a party, you don't necessarily
want the AI to remember you love gluten -free
cupcakes forever. You toggle on temporary chat,
the screen turns gray, and nothing is saved.
It's the burn after reading feature. OK, so looking
at these foundational settings, memory, custom
instructions, it does raise a question for me.
If we automate our context so heavily, do we
lose the ability to be flexible in how we ask
things? That is the tension. If you hard code
your instructions too strictly, you might just
create an echo chamber where the AI only talks
to you in one specific way. So, rigidity versus
convenience. Rigidity versus convenience, okay.
So, we've built the foundation, the settings
are locked in, now we have to actually talk to
the thing. Right. Section two of our source material
is the art of the prompt. And this is where most
people struggle. They blame the tool when they
get a generic answer. But usually the problem
isn't the AI, it's the input. The source compares
it to learning to ride a bike. It suggests there's
a perfect prompt structure, four parts. Roll,
context, task, and format. If you miss one of
those, the bike wobbles. Okay, let's role play
this because I want to see if it actually makes
a difference. Let's say I own a coffee shop.
The bad way would be me just typing what... Write
a post about coffee. Exactly. And the AI will
give you something so incredibly bland. Coffee
is great. Come drink it. It's useless. OK, so
fix it for me. How do I use the four parts? OK,
so roll. Act as a social media expert. Got it.
Context. I own a small coffee shop in Hanoi that
specializes in coconut coffee. OK, specific.
Task. Write a Facebook post for our summer launch.
And then format. Give it an exciting tone, use
three emojis, and keep it under 100 words. Okay,
wow. I can see how that would produce a wildly
different result. The AI knows exactly what success
looks like. You're not making a guess anymore,
you're giving it a map. And for listeners who
really want to geek out on this, the source mentions
Dr. Jules White's course on Coursera. Oh, yeah.
He frames this perfectly. He says language is
now a programming interface. You're coding with
English? You're writing code just without all
the syntax errors. So does the structure of the
prompt then matter more than the creativity of
the idea behind it? I would argue that in this
medium, yeah. The format is what unlocks the
function. You can have a brilliant idea, but
if you can't structure the request, the intelligence
can't manifest it for you. Format essentially
unlocking the function. That's a good takeaway.
Okay, let's move to section three, daily productivity
tools. This is about turning the AI from a fun
toy into a real workspace. And the first tool
here is called projects. The best analogy for
it is smart folders. This one resonates with
me because I hate context switching. Oh, yeah.
I'll be asking the AI to help me write a serious
email to a lawyer. But five minutes earlier,
I was asking it to generate names for, like,
a D &D character, and the tone just bleeds over.
It's so annoying. That is exactly what Project
Solves. You create a folder, say, Legal Work.
You can upload your previous contracts or your
company's style guides into that project. Oh.
Now, every chat inside that folder is walled
off. It knows the context is law, not... Dungeons
and Dragons. And speaking of finding things,
the source mentions the new search feature, which
seems obvious, but it wasn't there for a long
time. Windly. The little magnifying glass icon,
it turns your chat history from this messy endless
scroll into a searchable library. You just type
meeting or recipe and it pulls it right up. It
turns your past interactions into a database
you can actually use. Now, I want to talk about
voice mode. The source describes this as talking
like a human. I've used this while cooking, and
honestly, the thing that surprised me most was
the interruptions. It's startling, isn't it?
You can just cut it off mid -sentence and it
adjusts, it handles laughter, it understands
cadence. It totally changes the feeling of it.
It's not typing at a computer anymore. It feels
like a presence in the room. It creates a new
modality, brainstorming while driving, practicing
a language while you're doing dishes. It frees
the intelligence from the screen. Another productivity
feature mentioned is file uploads. The scenario
in the source is a classic one. Your boss sends
you a 50 page PDF report. Right. You upload it
and just say, summarize this. And seconds later,
you have the top five points in your action items.
But here's my skepticism. Do you trust it? I
mean, if I upload a dense legal contract or a
complex medical study, am I really going to trust
a three second summary? That is the critical
question. The source material frames this as
a massive time saver. And it is. But there is
a danger. We are trading date comprehension for
efficiency. We're outsourcing the reading. Right.
And if you outsource the reading, do you lose
the nuance? I think it's amazing for triage just
knowing if a document is worth your time to read
deeply. OK. But I wouldn't let it sign the contract
for me. That's a fair distinction. Triage versus
decision making. But just, I mean, pause for
a second and imagine the scaling implications.
even if it's just for triage. You handed a 50
page dense report and seconds later, you know
it's in it. It just changes the velocity of information
flow inside a company. It definitely speeds up
the treadmill, but does it make us better runners?
That's the question. Okay, we're back. We've
covered the settings, the prompts, and the daily
tools. Now let's unpack the really futuristic
stuff. Section 4 covers advanced vision and what
the source calls the doer era. Right. We are
moving beyond just text. The source discusses
multimodal prompts. This just means the AI can
see. And the examples here are so practical.
Taking a photo of your open fridge to get a recipe.
Or taking a photo of a broken bicycle part because
you have no idea what it's called. You just ask,
how do I fix this? It bridges that gap between
the physical world and digital information. Then
there's canvas mode. This one feels less like
a chat and more like, I don't know, like Google
Docs. It's a dedicated workspace for writing
and coding. So instead of the back and forth
chat bubbles, it opens a document window on the
side. So you can work next to it. Exactly. You
can highlight a paragraph and just say, make
this shorter. Or highlight a sentence and say,
check grammar. It becomes a side by side writing
partner. And we can't forget web browsing. Browse
with Bing. That one's crucial for relevance.
Without this, the AI is stuck in the past. Its
training data has a cutoff. With browsing, it
can check stock prices or current news. It connects
the brain to the live internet. Now the final
frontier in our source material is customization
and agents. This feels like the biggest shift
of all. It is. We are moving from the AI being
a talker to a doer. Can we make that concrete?
Because agent is such a buzzword. What does an
agent actually look like in 2026? Okay, imagine
this. You don't just ask the AI how should I
plan a dinner date. Right. You tell it, plan
a dinner date for me and my wife this Friday.
The agent then checks your calendar for when
you're both free. It goes to OpenTable and finds
a reservation at an Italian place you've liked
before. Then it drafts the calendar invite for
your wife. It doesn't just give you advice. It
executes the task. It connects to the apps. To
Google Drive, your calendar, your email. Exactly.
It's editing the files, not just talking about
them. So what does this all mean for us then?
If the AI starts doing rather than just talking,
Does my role change? Fundamentally, yes. You
shift from being the creator, the one actually
typing the email, to being the manager. You're
just supervising the results. So I become the
editor -in -chief of my own life. That's the
ideal, yeah. But it requires a different skill
set. You have to be really good at spotting errors
and really good at giving clear, concise instructions.
So to recap the big ideas here, we started with
the importance of settings, privacy, memory to
stop that drift. We move to projects that hold
our context, canvas for co -writing, and finally
these agents that actually do the work. And if
we look for the thread connecting all of this,
it's customization. The tool is only as powerful
as the settings you actually decide to turn on.
That hidden menu isn't just about features. It's
about moving from a passive user to an active
architect. So here is the challenge for you listening
right now. The source material is very clear
on this. Don't try to use all 17 features we
talked about today. You'll just get overwhelmed.
Just do one thing. Go to settings, go to personalization,
and open custom instructions. Spend five minutes,
just five minutes, telling the AI who you are
and how you want it to speak to you. It is such
a high leverage five minutes. Once you do that,
every single future conversation you have with
it improves. Stopped driving the Ferrari in first
gear open the menu. Thanks for diving in with
us today. Always a pleasure. See you next time